What It's Really Like to Work With Animals at SeaWorld
Growing up in the Midwest, thousands of miles away from the ocean, Jody Westberg dreamed of working with sea animals. A family vacation to San Diego at 12 solidified her goal: get a job at SeaWorld some day. She studied biology, spent her summers working with the farm animals in her 900-person town in South Dakota, and transferred to Cal State San Bernardino in Southern California her last year of college to be closer to SeaWorld.
More than 20 years into her career, Westberg is the stranded animal coordinator at SeaWorld San Diego, overseeing its animal rescue and rehabilitation program. The program - an integral part of SeaWorld's 10 parks - has rescued more than 28,000 distressed animals since 1964.
I'll never forget the first time I kneeled down with my bucket of fish to start hand-feeding penguins. It was an area with 300 to 400 penguins, and they all started to move toward me. One fat penguin full of personality named King Tut walked right up to me and stared at me like, "Who is this new girl?" I gave him a fish and he instantly became one of my favorites. Penguins all have distinct personalities, almost like dogs. They're curious, and they're loyal. They are monogamous and mate with the same penguin every year. But sometimes you will have male penguins that leave their nest to check out [the female penguin] at their neighbor's nest. During the breeding season, it can become a lot like a soap opera.
My first job at SeaWorld was as an assistant in the accounting department. After a year, a job opened up with the aviculture team [the group of keepers and scientists that cares for all the park's birds]. Even though most animal teams hire for entry-level positions from within the park, I had to go through several interviews. For the first six months, I worked side-by-side with a mentor to learn how to care for the penguins and their exhibit, and to educate guests about the animals.
In January of 1997, the mammal department rescue team needed help with their efforts to rescue a California gray whale calf that had been orphaned and was rolling in the surf in Marina Del Rey. I had to apply and went from working full-time as a penguin keeper to being a part-time husbandry assistant, which is the entry-level position of every animal team, and working with supervising mentors. My first job was making its food. I spent 10 hours a day blending fish and formula to feed this gray whale calf. She was 15 feet and 1,500 pounds when we rescued her and she was gaining over 2 pounds an hour at the height of her growth.
I spent the rest of my time learning about the species and watching the mammal team work. A lot of [the people on the team] had been there since the park had opened in 1964. These were my heroes growing up, and now I was working side-by-side with them. One day, a team member asked me if I wanted to help feed the whale calf, which we named J.J. I was only 25, and my little-girl dreams were coming true.
After a year assisting, a full-time opportunity opened up in the mammal department on the rescue team. I learned how to care for manatees, sea lions, dolphins, and sea otters, and I became one of J.J.'s keepers. I helped feed her from a giant bottle made from a hose and Gatorade coolers, and as she began eating solid food, I would put fish and krill at the bottom of her pool.
The night before J.J. was going to be released [13 months after arriving at the park], myself and the team that primarily cared for her spent the night poolside. We watched her swim around and just wished her good luck. The next day, when she was released into the ocean, the last thing you saw was her fluke waving. It was like a last little good-bye. I'm still so emotional about that, even 20 years later. It's certain that without our intervention, this animal would have died. Maybe she's a grandma whale by now.
Every day, we are cleaning up feces and urine. We are dealing with animals that have shark bite wounds and may have an infection that, if you have a queasy stomach, is something that's difficult to endure. We have the fish house where we prepare the food - sometimes up to 1,000 pounds a fish a day - and you forget how bad you smell until you have tours coming through and kids start plugging their noses. Smells also tell you things. We can tell by the smell if an animal is healthy or sick. And you'd be amazed what we can tell by an animal's poop - whether it's dehydrated, has a parasite, or is lacking certain nutrients.
Each of the SeaWorld parks has its own rescue team. Our jurisdiction is San Diego County, but we work with national organizations such as the National Marine Fisheries Service to help with rescue efforts any way we can. For example, in 2013, there was a humpback whale entangled off the coast of the Channel Islands [off the coast of Southern California]. Because not many people have training to rescue entangled whales at sea - I am one of four at SeaWorld San Diego - my team was called in.
On average, the San Diego program rescues 150 to 200 marine mammals a year. In 2015, we rescued over 1,000. This year we've rescued almost 400 so far. We don't know why there are more animals being rescued now. It could be water temperatures, ocean dynamics, or [surplus] population. It's something we're constantly studying.
Our survival rate for rescued animals is usually 68 to 72 percent. So many of these animals we rescue are so far gone, and it's too late for even our best rescue efforts. We call them walking skeletons. They're so malnourished. You can see their ribs and their hips. With every animal we rescue, the goal is to return them to the wild, and to learn from them to better understand the species. And because we have worked with [resident] animals at the parks, we can better understand the natural behavior of those species when we rescue them in the wild.
A lot of my past experience working around larger livestock animals has really helped me in this work. It's all about being respectful around the animals and understanding how their behavior is letting you know what your next move is. It can be dangerous. These animals don't know we're here to help them. They have experienced trauma and they're afraid. Their natural instinct is fight or flight. That's why we go through all kinds of safety training and we always wear protective equipment. We're only going to rescue an animal if it's safe for the animal and it's safe for the rescue team. We may be monitoring an animal for a week before we can make a safe rescue attempt.
One of the things I love about my job is every day is different. One day, I'm rescuing a 5-pound neonatal sea lion pup, and the next day, I'm out responding to a [stranded] juvenile humpback whale that weighs 20,000 pounds. Of all the mammals we work with, sea lions hold a special place in my heart. They're complete goofballs, and we rescue more of them than other species. To see a sea lion go from being so sick it can't move to swimming away fat and happy really tugs at my heartstrings.
These animals aren't just rescued on the weekdays. This is a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week job. We work holidays. I remember a Christmas a couple years ago when a bunch of us were still here at 8 p.m. because we had rescued animals that day. We were taking pictures and celebrating that we helped these animals, but that meant we weren't with our families. One of the hardest things for me is being away from South Dakota because that's where my family is. I want to inspire my niece and nephews and younger cousins, and show them you can come from a town in the Midwest with less than 900 people and do whatever you want. But I also miss them. Our families are very supportive of what we do because they know it's more than just a job; it's a calling and a passion.
A big misconception is that we rescue these animals to put them in our shows. That couldn't be further from the truth. Every animal that [permanently] lives at SeaWorld was born here.
I find most people who are critics of SeaWorld have never even visited one of our parks. So I tell them, "Come and spend a day with me." I know that we may not agree on everything - like whether animals should be in zoos and aquariums - but I want them see firsthand how well we care for our animals at SeaWorld and how passionate we are about providing our animals a fantastic quality of life.
The film [Blackfish] was so far from what I know the real SeaWorld to be because I live it every day. It was very hard for me when I started hearing kids say that they were no longer dreaming of working at SeaWorld and thought that we abused our animals. On some rescues, my teammates and I were harassed. Some people even threw rocks and soda cans at us when we were trying to save a stranded animal's life. We knew what we were doing was in the best interest of these animals in need, and we weren't going to let a handful of ill-informed people stop us from coming to the aid of a sick or injured animal that needed our help.
The goal of the rescue program is to return every animal to the wild. There is a very small percentage of animals we deem non-releasable. For example, an animal that comes in blind cannot forage or catch prey on its own out in the wild. Other animals have severe injuries, like a lost flipper, and they can't survive on their own. We refer these animals to National Marine Fisheries Service, which determines the outcome for that animal - whether they stay with us, or go to another zoo or oceanarium.
The thing about working in rescue rehabilitation is that it's a physical, mental, and emotional job. We all have an emotional connection to the animals. We try to compartmentalize it. We know that even if we weren't able to save one animal, there are three others that we did save. And we learn from the ones that don't make it; each one gets an animal autopsy so we can help the next animal that comes in suffering from the same symptoms. But the minute you see those animals that would have died start responding to the rehabilitation and getting a second chance at life, that is the best part of the job.
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