A SeaWorld contact ban is being challenged by the park on Tuesday. SeaWorld officials will attempt to get a federal ban that prohibits trainers to be in contact with killer whales overturned.
The ban was implemented in 2010 after trainer Dawn Brancheau was killed by a killer whale at SeaWorld Orlando. Brancheau was dragged into the water and killed in front of spectators, Fox Orlando reported.
SeaWorld has said that the federal ban has gone too far as the park relies on human contact to care for the whales.
The park said the restriction would be akin to banning tackling from the NFL.
According to CNN, SeaWorld is asking a panel of several judges to again look at the ban.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA, said SeaWorld violated the general duty clause, claiming the park exposed workers to a known danger in the workplace.
“SeaWorld offers the public an opportunity to observe humans’ interaction with killer whales,” SeaWorld said, according to the network. “This brings profound public educational benefit, is integral to SeaWorld’s care of the whales, and responds to an elemental human desire to know, understand, and interact with the natural world.”
The whale who killed Brancheau, named Tilikum, killed at least one other person before it came to SeaWorld.
But OSHA said there have been “near misses” regarding trainers and killer whales that left trainers injured, USA Today reported.
“Forty-plus years of history at the SeaWorld parks have yielded occasion after occasion where captive killer whales have not responded as their trainers intended,” OSHA attorneys wrote. “The hazard in this case was well-known to SeaWorld and fully capable of being prevented.”
