**A killer whale which pulled its trainer to her death at a Florida marine park was probably attracted by her ponytail, a SeaWorld Orlando official has said.**Dawn Brancheau’s long hair swung out in front of the orca as she finished a training session and the whale grabbed it, Chuck Tompkins told US media.
Horrified tourists using the viewing glass could see the 12,000lb (5.9tn) whale attack Ms Brancheau underwater.
The park is to keep the animal despite its part in this and two other deaths.
“That ponytail had swung in front of him”
Chuck Tompkins
chief of animal training at SeaWorld Orlando
SeaWorld said its staff would continue to interact with the whale, named Tilikum, despite calls to release or destroy it.
But all orca shows were suspended after Wednesday’s death as the park reviewed its safety procedures.
Ms Brancheau’s sister, Diane Gross, said her sister, 40, had loved the park’s whales as though they were her children.
“It was her dream job since she was nine years old,” she added, speaking of her sister’s ambition to work at SeaWorld.
‘After a good session’
Speaking to ABC television, Mr Tompkins said the casual swing of the trainer’s ponytail was the likely cause of the attack.
“What we have found out is that Dawn had just finished up a very good session with this animal,” the chief of animal training said.
“She was interacting with him, petting him on the nose. Dawn had very long hair in a ponytail. That ponytail had swung in front of him. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her underwater and held her underwater.”
Thad Lacinak, a former head trainer at SeaWorld who trained Ms Brancheau, said after viewing video of the attack that he believed she had made a simple but fatal mistake.
“She wasn’t, obviously, watching what she was doing with her ponytail and the ponytail drifted into the water,” he told ABC.
Had she lived, Mr Lacinak believes, she would have acknowledged it was her mistake.
An eyewitness, Sue Nichols, saw Ms Brancheau petting the whale and talking to it.
“Then all of a sudden he just reached up,” she said.
“He got her in the water, and he took her underwater, and he had her under for quite a while. He came up out of the water, and he had her in his mouth.”
An alarm was sounded and park employees scattered around the pool with a net as audience members were rushed away, she added.
Third death
Earlier, Mr Tompkins said Tilikum would not survive in the wild because the animal had been captive for so long.
He added that destroying the whale was not an option because it was an important part of the breeding programme at SeaWorld and a companion to seven other whales there.
However, this is the third death involving the orca.
In 1991, trainer Keltie Lee Byrne fell into a tank holding Tillikum and two other whales at Sealand of the Pacific in Victoria, Canada.
An inquest found the whales had prevented her from climbing out of the tank and ruled her death an accident.
At SeaWorld Orlando, in 1999, the body of Daniel Dukes, 27, was found naked, draped across the whale’s body.
He had reportedly got past security, remaining in the park after it had closed, and wearing only swimming trunks, he either jumped, fell or was pulled into the frigid water of the huge tank.
An inquest ruled that he had died of hypothermia but officials also said it appeared Tilikum had bitten the man and torn off his trunks, apparently believing he was a toy to play with.