(cetacean needed)

Oooh damn we got big feelings today. Interesting because I've discussed most of these issues and concerns on my blog before but clearly you haven't bothered to look. Or you did and that's what's upset you because it's uncomfortable to be wrong?

I don't expect you to change your mind but just for my followers and people who are interested in learning, let me break down the things you've said:

"Keeping orcas in captivity is animal cruelty because these highly intelligent apex predators swim up to 100 miles a day in the wild"

Orcas are socially intelligent, sure. Sometimes they swim up to 100 miles a day, but if they have all their needs met, they often won't swim such long distances. Travel is energetically expensive and it requires specific motivations to do so eg. finding food, avoiding stressors.

"Any concrete tank a tiny "bathtub" that causes extreme psychological distress and "zoochosis “"

I wouldn't call over 7 million gallons of water a bathtub. You can't dive and jump and swim fast in a bathtub - so it's an invalid comparison.

Is the "extreme psychological distress" in the room with us right now? Because I work in behaviour rehabilitation of animals experiencing chronic stress. Animals experiencing significant chronic stress won't eat very well, won't participate in learning/problem solving as their mental resources are taken up, they will regularly be unwell due to their immune systems being compromised and they may display behavioural shutdown as well. These are not behaviours that are baseline in captive orca populations.

Sánchez–Hernández P, Krasheninnikova A, Almunia J, Molina–Borja M. Social interaction analysis in captive orcas (Orcinus orca). Zoo Biology. 2019;38:323–333. https://doi.org/10.1002/zoo.21502

Santa, A., Kanda, K., Kako, T., Miyajima, M., & Adachi, I. (2024). Matching-to-Sample Task Training of a Killer Whale (Orcinus orca). Animals, 14(6), 821. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani14060821

Almunia J, Lüke JP and Rosa F (2025) Vocal activity as a welfare indicator in killer whales in managed care. Front. Mar. Sci. 12:1595113. doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1595113

What We Have Learned From Killer Whales in Managed Care

"Zoochosis" is a linguistically and scientifically invalid word that was made up by "Born Free" - an anti zoo organisation that is good at marketing without actually improving welfare outcomes for animals in zoos. It does not address the nuances of zoological management and basically chalks up all potential issues as inherent to the zoo environment. This is deeply counter productive to addressing welfare concerns.

"You can see the damage in their collapsed dorsal fins which happens to 100% of captive males but less than 1% in the wild"

But the females don't have dorsal fin collapse - so are only the males "suffering" then? Or could it be due to the simple fact that the male orca dorsal fin is very tall and heavy and orcas in human care are spending more time at the surface, therefore having less support of the water column?

Interestingly, it's not 100% of male orcas. Panghu, wild captured from Russian waters and now living in Shanghai Haichang Ocean Park, is 20 years old and still has an upright dorsal fin. Yet the facility is a lot smaller than SeaWorld's so perhaps it's also genetics related.

"Their broken teeth from biting metal bars out of pure frustration."

Biting at metal bars/gates is pretty rare but mouthing is also how all cetaceans explore their environment. Mouthing or ramming gates may happen from social frustration - like fencing fighting in dogs. They have very soft teeth enamel, so if they do mouth at anything hard, it'll affect their teeth. I've written up a post on teeth that you can find in my "cetacean welfare" tag.

"In these tanks their sensitive sonar constantly bounces off the walls creating an acoustic hell"

Incorrect. Cetaceans are perfectly capable of controlling their echolocation abilities and are not just firing off click trains at random. See below a spectrogram of recordings of dolphin echolocation in a tank vs a lagoon

(Source)

You can see that both animals are echolocating regularly and there was no major difference between dolphins in lagoons vs tanks, besides the snapping shrimp recorded in the lagoons.

Since we know that cetaceans are capable of modulating their click frequency and intensity, we'd see lower frequency and intensity in the tank if echolocation was causing any sort of distress to the animals.

Fun fact: Echolocation and signature whistles were both concepts that were discovered and studied in dolphins living in tanks.

AN EXPERIMENTAL DEMONSTRATION OF ECHOLOCATION BEHAVIOR IN THE PORPOISE, TURSIOPS TRUNCATUS (MONTAGU)

KENNETH S. NORRIS, JOHN H. PRESCOTT, PAUL V. ASA-DORIAN, and PAUL PERKINSThe Biological Bulletin 1961 120:2, 163-176

And those discoveries were able to be applied to wild dolphins. And we now know how acoustically sensitive these animals are to boat traffic, navy submarines and offshore oil drilling, which DOES actually cause significant impairments and communication issues in wild populations.

Stevens, P. E., Hill, H. M., & Bruck, J. N. (2021). Cetacean Acoustic Welfare in Wild and Managed-Care Settings: Gaps and Opportunities. Animals, 11(11), 3312. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani11113312

Stevens, P. E., Allen, V., & Bruck, J. N. (2023). A Quieter Ocean: Experimentally Derived Differences in Attentive Responses of Tursiops truncatus to Anthropogenic Noise Playbacks before and during the COVID-19-Related Anthropause. Animals, 13(7), 1269. https://doi.org/10.3390/ani13071269

"while they are forced to perform "tricks" for dead fish because they are kept hungry until they obey"

Just another blatantly incorrect assumption straight from the Blackfish playbook. While this WAS a technique used 40-50 years ago, it has not been implemented in facilities like SeaWorld in decades because it created dangerous and frustrated animals.

Animals are provided with their entire dietary intake regardless of "performance". You can see multiple times when orcas simply refuse to participate and trainers step back and cancel a show. They are still given all their food. They also don't always care to work for food because its so readily available - so trainers have to be creative and use other reinforcers like rubdowns, ice and gelatin.

"Separating them from their families with whom they stay for life in nature is traumatizing and leads to unnatural aggression and early death"

While the initial wild captures were undoubtedly traumatic - the orcas you see today are all part of matrilineal family groups, with some exceptions. But they have shown a lot of adaptability in their social groups and certainly not "unnatural aggression".

A good example of this is the Loro Parque orca group, which is by far the most unnatural hodgepodge of loosely and unrelated orca. Yet a study in 2019 revealed that agonistic ("aggressive) behaviours were between 1-2%

(Source)

"This isn't education or conservation it is exploitation for profit and forcing an emotional social being into a chlorinated cage for entertainment is the definition of abuse."

That's your opinion and you're entitled to that. I don't believe it is a factually informed opinion, as you don't seem to know that the chlorine levels in the orca pools are less than what is in our drinking water. It is mostly just filtered salt water.

I would also say that while we still don't have enough data to conclusively 100% support this, there is more research coming out now that is showing positive welfare states in cetacean species such as orcas and bottlenose dolphins. And if people are entertained by animals doing learned behaviours as part of their usual enrichment of the day and can be educated by that, I don't see that as a bad thing. Provided that the welfare of the animals is prioritised.

Unfortunately the rhetoric anon is applying here is not helpful to actually improving animal welfare. I noticed pretty much the entirety of this message is cut and paste talking points from the organisations that rely on you being convinced that orcas in human care are suffering so they can obtain financial and legal support.

So I would encourage anyone curious about cetacean welfare to diversify their sources and watch out for any social media post that gives you a strong feeling/reaction.

You can also check out this collection of papers based on data collected in one of the largest multi-instiution studies ever undertaken on cetaceans:

Are these deaths as common in the wild ? If they aren’t, what causes these illnesses and diseases ?

Why do a good handful of young, captive cetaceans die each year ?

Thank you in advance ! I am not against accredited zoological facilities that hold cetaceans, but i am curious about the mortality rates.

I disagree that "a good handful of young, captive cetaceans" are dying each year but I don't blame you for reaching that conclusion given how the media reports on cetacean deaths in human care. And how people adamantly repeat very outdated/debunk life expectancy rates - particularly for killer whales.

Let's look at 2025

The most recent death of an orca at SeaWorld was Katina - she was over 50 and well and truly at the maximum lifespan of a female killer whale in both wild and captive populations (no, they don't live to 100). She was euthanized due to an ongoing chronic respiratory infection.

Then there was Kshamenk - who was 36 years old, very close to 40, which is the expected life span of a male killer whale. He died of cardiac arrest.

The two most recent younger deaths was Earth at Port of Nagoya Aquarium - at 16 years old. And Kamea at SeaWorld San Antonio at 11 years old. Though there were no confirmed causes of death so I can't comment on those. But I wouldn't say that's a "handful"

Respiratory infections have been observed in stranded wild cetaceans and in captive cetaceans. However, there really isn't a lot of data for asymptomatic wild cetaceans - basically, unless the animal strands, its really hard to get any sort of comparable baseline with the animals we study in human care. Not to mention we're comparing animals living in significantly different environments.

They're only just starting to map out bacterial microbiomes in the Southern Resident Killer Whales

And we're still figuring out the best ways to assess wild killer whale health

Drone technology has just started to allow us to get respiratory data from large baleen whales but not smaller cetaceans like bottlenose dolphins, who are more easily spooked by the noise. Killer whales seem to be having more success with drone health monitoring, but the technology is always advancing.

Lets be honest. It's just really hard to study wild cetaceans and get consistent ongoing data about health and wellbeing. I tried to find papers that discussed pathogens found in wild populations and found a very small amount compared to all the veterinary reports and studies we have on cetaceans in captivity.

This fairly recent 2026 paper used baseline pathogen samples from orcas in human care and compared to wild populations - they found crossovers and saw that wild killer whales that were identified with certain pathogens died 6 months later.

The reason we have so much evidence of pathogens found in cetaceans in human care is simply because its far easier to collect those samples.

If we're still comparing killer whale deaths for 2025:

Not much media reporting on 28 year old I76 - the Northern Resident killer whale that was observed having difficulty breathing and was severely emaciated before he was seen taking his last breath and sinking into the depths

Or J64, the Southern Resident 1 month old calf seen briefly at their mother's side before never being seen again

Or the 26 killer whales that stranded and died in Argentina

But deaths of cetaceans in human care make headline news. And, in many cases, misreports and sensationalises the deaths.

Do we owe it to cetaceans in human care to do the absolute best we can to prevent them from dying of diseases? Absolutely. But they don't actually live in a 100% sterile environment the way antis claim they do - because they don't actually live in "chlorinated pools" - the amount of chlorine is less than drinking water. There will be pathogens around in the air and in the water. Not the same pathogens in the ocean, but still, pathogens.

Cetacean veterinary medicine is still an emerging specialised field and not nearly as advanced as livestock or small animal practice.

We can't prevent animals dying of sudden unpreventable illnesses like cardiac arrest in an older animal or gastric torsion, which we can barely save pet dogs from at the best of times. Congenital disease is something that should be prevented with better breeding practices but unfortunately there were some bad management choices in the past that led to congenital diseases, which led to premature deaths.

This isn't anything against you, anon, but I just don't understand why the media and the public acts as if keeping an animal in human care immediately means they should be able to cheat death or never ever get sick - and if they do, it could never possibly happen in the wild. It's just such a bizarre mentality.

And ... okay so maybe this is a little bit of a reach but maybe sort of thinking drives the mentality to assume any wild cetacean stranding is due to misadventure and they just need to be shoved back into the ocean and they'll be fine. Because wild cetaceans don't ever get sick because they're Wild and Free and only captive cetaceans are getting sick.

A dog that is trying to bite when being touched is very VERY likely experiencing or anticipating pain.

You know what the dumbest thing to do is? Putting a slip leash on it and yanking on it every time the dog tries to communicate that they are NOT COMFORTABLE!!!!