SeaWorld marine park will no longer exploit orcas in shows
Environment — di Lorenzo Brenna
The San Diego park has announced that from 2017 it intends to gradually phase out shows involving orcas.
SeaWorld marine park will no longer exploit orcas in shows
The San Diego park has announced that from 2017 it intends to gradually phase out shows involving orcas.
Orcas (Orcinus orca), like all cetaceans, are sensitive, intelligent creatures with complex social lives. Imprisoning these animals, which in the wild live in pods of up to forty individuals, and forcing them to perform for human entertainment is an act of intolerable cruelty. Confined in small tanks, orcas deteriorate physically and end up losing their minds, becoming aggressive and dangerous to their trainers.
Public awareness of the exploitation of these large marine mammals grew exponentially following the release of Blackfish, a 2013 documentary that, through the story of Tilikum, an orca who killed three people in captivity, exposes the mistreatment of orcas in water parks.
The outrage the film stirred up among the general public inevitably reached those working in the industry and the marine parks that use orcas in their shows.
The SeaWorld aquatic amusement park in San Diego has announced that from 2017 it intends to gradually phase out shows involving orcas. Following the release of the documentary exposing the mistreatment of orcas and other animals, SeaWorld's share price collapsed, falling from $39 in 2013 to the current $18.
Joel Manby, SeaWorld's chief executive, admitted that the decision to give up the orcas came in response to heavy criticism and a drastic reduction in visitor numbers at their water parks. The decision also comes after a lawmaker introduced a bill to ban live shows and the captive breeding of orcas in California.
"The orcas will be used in activities more in keeping with their nature and their behaviours," Manby said, but it is not entirely clear what this means and it nonetheless appears to presuppose the continuation of orcas' captivity. Nor has it been specified whether the new policy will also apply to SeaWorld's other parks in the United States.
According to scientists, orcas possess a part of the brain that has not evolved in humans, relating to emotions and self-awareness. One can only wonder how these animals must pity us, judging us to be empathically sterile, as we watch them joyfully jumping and swimming in their tiny prisons.