Ethical, Educational, and Conservation Values of SeaWorld
Ferris Jabr’s “The Secret Life of Plants,” articulated heavy themes of survival of the fittest. Survival of captive versus. wild animals shares distinct similarities to those themes, especially because of SeaWorld’s recent announcement to end its orca breeding program. Life on a Medieval Barony, as well, discusses how peasants were bound to the land, much like how the whales are bound to the SeaWorld corporation. There is a clear connection between Blackfish, a documentary exposing SeaWorld of its treatment to its animals, and Frida Kahlo’s Self Portrait Between the Borderline of Mexico and the United States. Much like Kahlo felt homesickness and longing for her home country, the whales probably long to return to the ocean. Yet, SeaWorld offers an educational and fun experience that may inspire the public to participate in conserving animals and has done work that has been environmentally beneficial. Therefore, this should be examined before determining whether SeaWorld should continue to operate. Ethical Issues of SeaWorld In 1983, a group of men hunting whales threw explosives in the water to herd off the pod, so they could capture a young whale for what what would later become a multi-billion dollar company: SeaWorld. They ignored the cries from the rest of the whales, then killed the mother to make it easier to take her calf. John Crowe, one of those orca hunters, compared it to “kidnapping a kid from its mother” (Cowperthwaite, 2013). In fear of getting caught for their illegal activity, the hunters sunk three dead whales to the bottom of the ocean. Around the time of this incident, SeaWorld claimed that they do not split up mother and baby whales. However, John Hargrove, former Senior Orca Trainer of SeaWorld, recalls several instances of the corporation deciding to separate mothers and babies from each other (Chua-Eoan & Hargrove, 2015). For example, when a mother whale, Katsaka, was separated from her baby it was recorded that she made highly unusual noises long after they took her baby away from her. Senior research scientists from SeaWorld analyzed these vocalizations and determined that they were long range vocals, indicating that she was trying to locate her baby (Cowperthwaite, 2013). In the wild, orcas stay by their mothers long past the point of adulthood. While the tanks of orcas appear large to people, in comparison, they are the size that a bathtub is to a person. The Whale and Dolphin Conservation (WDC), a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and conserving whales and dolphins, states that because whales swim up to one hundred miles a day, their tanks at SeaWorld would have to be 1,400 times larger (WDC, 2015). Additionally, according to Dr. Naomi Rose, a marine mammal protection advocate at The Humane Society, who has studied several of the whales kept at SeaWorld, argues that because these tanks are not very deep, the orca’s dorsal fins suffer from one hundred percent collapse, compared to one to five percent in the wild (Rose, 2011). A side effect of this confined living space is the drastic …show more content…
Moreover, SeaWorld has repeatedly placed the blame on the victims, rather than the whale, resulting in debate over which party should actually be held responsible. Because of these incidents, animal training poses serious threats. Even Howard Garrett, director and researcher of the nonprofit Orca Network, says "in their natural habitat, there is no record of any harm to a human anywhere,” but in captivity, there have been dozens of incidents involving injury from whales (Cowperthwaite, 2013; Rose, 2011). While orcas have been covered rather extensively by the media, other animals like sea lions and dolphins have also experienced the tolls of captivity. Hargrove, who used to work with the sea lions, explains that the chlorine was so strong in their water, that many of them went blind. Several of these mammals also developed arthritis from having to live and perform on concrete (Chua-Eoan & Hargrove, 2015). Moreover, both wild sea lions and dolphins swim an extensive amount of miles every day, like the orcas, but their pools prohibit them from doing