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Beneath the Surface

Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish

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Beneath the Surface

Auteur(s): John Hargrove, Howard Chua-Eoan
Narrateur(s): John Hargrove
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 Over the course of two decades, John Hargrove worked with 20 different whales on two continents and at two of SeaWorld’s U.S. facilities. For Hargrove, becoming an orca trainer fulfilled a childhood dream. However, as his experience with the whales deepened, Hargrove came to doubt that their needs could ever be met in captivity. When two fellow trainers were killed by orcas in marine parks, Hargrove decided that SeaWorld’s wildly popular programs were both detrimental to the whales and ultimately unsafe for trainers.

After leaving SeaWorld, Hargrove became one of the stars of the controversial documentary Blackfish. The outcry over the treatment of SeaWorld’s orca has now expanded beyond the outlines sketched by the award-winning documentary, with Hargrove contributing his expertise to an advocacy movement that is convincing both federal and state governments to act.

In Beneath the Surface, Hargrove paints a compelling portrait of these highly intelligent and social creatures, including his favorite whales Takara and her mother Kasatka, two of the most dominant orcas in SeaWorld. And he includes vibrant descriptions of the lives of orcas in the wild, contrasting their freedom in the ocean with their lives in SeaWorld.

Hargrove’s journey is one that humanity has just begun to take—toward the realization that the relationship between the human and animal worlds must be radically rethought. Science Sciences biologiques
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Thank you for sharing your story. I could not stop listening until it was over.

On the Right Side of History

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This was a challenging read in many ways. In many ways, I related to the author's experience as a child, visiting Sea World and falling in love with orcas and the "dream job" of being a trainer. I remember visiting Marineland in Niagara Falls with my family, and watching the movie Free Willy, and I had a similar experience: I was going to be a killer whale trainer. For the rest of the book, it was an uncomfortable glimpse into the "what if" scenario where I had followed that dream with the same passion and dedication, and the wonder and heartbreak that could have lead to.
The actual structure of the book was challenging as well. It was much more of a memoir than I was expecting (although that is my fault for going in with inaccurate expectations), but also peppered with really informative dives into larger topics. The memoir was fascinating, because you could really feel the enthusiasm and joy in so many of the stories he shared. I've never felt as passionately about my work as the author clearly does, despite the way his career ended and his subsequent advocacy against the way Sea World treats their whales. For much of the book I was slightly critical of this apparent contradiction, and I chalked it up to the author struggling to come to terms with the positive relationship he had with the orcas that he admits were prisoners, and to whom he was simply a "favorite prison guard." During the final pages of the last chapter, as he discussed the Four Stages of his career from naive and hopeful to painfully aware of the disconnect between his good intentions and the corporate values of Sea World, that was when I realized that what I had interpreted as subtle self-delusion was actually intentional and meant to reflect his perceptions at that stage of his career.

As I finished the book, and read about the fallout from "Blackfish" and the potential future of Sea World, it was a little bit depressing to think about (and research) the lack of progress in the years since the book was published. I had no idea it had been 10 years since this book was published, and more than 15 since the death of Dawn Brancheau. In some ways it seems like just a few years ago. In other ways it seems like ancient history, and I worry that the momentum of public opinion has faded. It was distressing to Google the names of the orcas Hargrove speculates about and see how grimly accurate his predictions proved to be. Kiska, the last of the orcas at Marineland Niagara Falls, died in 2023, the "loneliest killer whale in the world." Morgan, the orca that "temporarily" wound up in an amusement park in Spain after the rehabilitation program that rescued her could find her family, did end up getting pregnant and giving birth to a calf, which died at only 3 years old. She just recently gave birth to a second calf in March 2025.

Hargrove quotes Jane Velez-Mitchell: “This [humankind's relationship with the other inhabitants of this planet] is the emerging social justice of the 21st century.” Unfortunately in the years since the book was published it seems that we have taken a step backwards, and the social justice (if you can even say those words without being blasted as "woke") of the 21st Century now seems to be just treating other human beings with dignity. Can we ever hope to treat orcas with the respect and empathy they deserve when we can't even treat our fellow humans as beings with rights and freedoms of their own. I hope that in another 10 years there will be many wrongs that have been righted.

A challenging read in many ways.

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I was drawn to this book because of Blackfish. I enjoyed that it was first hand accounts from before starting his career to after leaving sea world and is told in a very human way looking back with awareness and criticism that wouldn’t have existed at the time.
Very good story, very well told.

Well told experiences

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Great book. Found this after watching blackfish. Thanks for sharing your experience and advocating for orcas.

Jemma

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Highly recommend this book. It offers a detailed explanation of aspects of SeaWorld that simply cannot be covered in an 85 minute documentary.

However, it's to be taken with a grain of salt, as the author often projects human emotions onto the orcas. I felt like screaming everytime he said "the dark side". There was also an overuse of hyperbole, to the point where it was irritating.

Highly recommend - but with several grains of salt

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