Sea World Case Study

Sea World; family fun or nightmare to whales?
Are you someone who would feel comfortable paying for an orca show knowing full well that that money is helping to fund their abuse? The orcas at SeaWorld go through countless traumatizing experiences, the worst case being Tilikum the 30 year old “killer”. He was captured at the age of two and brought to a cement holding tank to await being transferred to a marine park. The only thing he could do was swim around in circles and float to the top. Then he was sent to Sealand where food was withheld as a training method, and for 14 hours, from the time the park was closed, to when it was opened, he was in a tiny metal module with two dominant female orcas.
He was forced to perform every hour on the hour with eight shows a day. This stress ended up giving

the whale stomach ulcers.
One day, one of the trainers fell into the orca tank and was soon pulled to the bottom of the 35 foot deep pool by Tilikum and was the tossed around between the three orcas.

That trainer turned into one of three to fall to Tilikum’s stress, and frustration. Sealand closed its doors shortly after and put Tilikum and the other two whales up for sale. SeaWorld heard about Tilikum and jumped at the opportunity and bought the 12,000 pound bull for their breeding program. They thought very little of his aggression and killing reputation, putting their own employees at risk.
About 54% of the orcas at SeaWorld have Tilikum’s genes. The rest of the whales and him at SeaWorld are confined to tanks that are about .0001% of the quantity of water they would travel in a single day. Over 21 years Tilikum has shown various different acts of aggression towards staff and the tank. His teeth are almost completely worn down from constant chewing on the metal gates. He ended up killing two trainers at SeaWorld including the most experienced trainer there, Dawn. He scalped her along with breaking multiple bones in her body before downing her.
SeaWorld attempted to blame Dawn for the

accident.
They blamed their most experienced trainer on the incident instead of realizing just how dangerous Tilikum actually is.
After the death of dawn Tilikum was placed in a tank that is equivalent to a jail cell and far too small for him. SeaWorld cut off his ability to communicate with other whales and even swim around. He would be seen floating listlessly in the water, which is a behavior that is never seen by orcas in the wild. After a year of isolation Tilikum had started to perform again, despite the risks.
SeaWorld is asking the government to allow people to swim with orcas even if the risk is death. Even though Tilikum is so famous, he’s not the only aggressive orca at SeaWorld. They have about 600 incident reports documenting dangerous and unanticipated orca behavior with trainers; consisting of more than 100 incidents in which killer whales bit, rammed, lunged at, pulled, pinned, and swam aggressively with SeaWorld trainers, many of which led to human injuries.
In the wild, orcas swim for miles a day with the wide open ocean as their play area. They hunt in packs and have close family bonds. When they’re taken out of the wild for no reason other than human enjoyment it becomes a severe problem. SeaWorld may try to play the victim in all of this and claim to be “helping” the orcas, but in all honesty they’re doing the opposite of that. The parking lot at Sea World is larger than their biggest tank in which they hold orcas. By paying for a ticket to go to SeaWorld you are indirectly funding this abuse on the whales.