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Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, 2002 dir. Kelly Asbury & Lorna Cook

Gender: Male Pod: N/A Place of Capture: Born at SeaWorld of Florida Date of Capture: Born on June 22, 1999 Age at Capture: Captive born Current Location: SeaWorld of Texas

On June 22, 1999, captive born female Kalina gave birth to her fourth calf at SeaWorld Orlando, a male named Flash sired by the Icelandic male Tilikum.

The public did not seem to like the name Flash for the calf, and so the very first online-poll was held by SeaWorld to help name the calf. Tuar was the winning name, beating out two others - Illa, and Okkar.

The following year in November 2000, Tuar’s half brother was born to the captive born female Taima. However, Taima became unusually aggressive towards her calf, known as Tekoa, and as a result, Tekoa spent most of his time with Kalina and Tuar, with both young calves growing very close.

In April 2004, Tuar and Tekoa were both moved to SeaWorld San Antonio where they seemed to grow apart. Tekoa ended up being moved again in 2006 while Tuar remained at the Texas park.

While Tuar is not described as an aggressive whale, he has been involved in several incidents with trainers throughout the 2000′s; including clamping down on a trainer’s arm, clamping down on a trainer’s leg, coming out at trainers, as well as surfacing on top of trainers before.

Today, Tuar is 15 years old, has never sired a calf, and still remains at the SeaWorld Texas park.

Gender: Male Pod: N/A Place of Capture: Born at SeaWorld of Florida Date of Capture: Born on November 8, 2000 Age at Capture: Captive born Current Location: Loro Parque, Spain

On November 8, 2000, captive born female Taima gave birth to her second calf, a male named Tekoa sired by the Icelandic male Tilikum.

Taima was a good mother for the most part, but after some months, began displaying aggression towards Tekoa like she did with her first son, Sumar. This resulted in the pair being separated, and after various unsuccessful attempts at reuniting the pair, they were separated permanently.

However, the captive born female Kalina, who had just given birth to a calf of her own, a male named Tuar, took it upon herself to care for Tekoa. The two calves became close friends until they were both moved to the Texas park in April 2004 where they met many new whales.

In February 2006, Tekoa was moved to Loro Parque in Spain with 3 other young whales; Skyla, Keto, and Kohana. Tekoa is one of the more submissive whales at the park, and can often be seen with rake marks covering his body.

On October 6, 2007, Tekoa was involved in an incident with trainer Claudia Vollhardt. It was reported that Tekoa crashed into Vollhardt before dragging her down. He then proceeded to grab her arm, bringing her down again before bringing her to the surface. Two fellow trainers were able to pull her from the water, but not before she suffered several serious injuries including two breaks to one of her forearms and injuries to her right lung. After this incident, certain protocols were put in place that restricted what trainers could do with Tekoa.

Today, Tekoa is 14 years old and still remains at Loro Parque.

Takara and Kohana became inseparable. At first Kohana was shy, compared to her mother who would often spend time interacting with guests through the underwater viewing, but became more open and playful around the time she was a year old. In 2004, when Kohana was 2 years old, she and Takara were both moved to the Orlando park where Kohana met some of her half-siblings.

However, in February 2006 when Kohana was just 3 years old, she was moved to Loro Parque in Spain with three other closely-related young whales known as Skyla, Keto, and Tekoa. Being the oldest female at the park, Kohana often shows dominance over the others, but with a lack of an experienced matriarch, the social structure at Loro Parque is unstable and often results in aggression between the whales.

In October 2010, Kohana gave birth to her first calf at just 8 years old, a male named Adán sired by Keto, who is also Kohana’s uncle. Unfortunately, due to being separated from her mother at such a young age, Kohana never learned necessary maternal skills and rejected Adán immediately, paying no mind to her new calf. This resulted in staff having to bottle-feed Adán, despite the abysmal failure of hand-raised captive calves in the past. Soon enough, Adán was introduced to the other whales and reintroduced to his mother. They all get along, but Kohana plays no maternal role to him.

In August 2012, Kohana gave birth to her second calf, a female named Victoria - Vicky for short - also sired by her uncle Keto. Once again, Kohana rejected Vicky immediately, and reportedly became aggressive towards her, forcing staff to separate the pair and hand-raise Vicky as well. For a short while, Vicky was reportedly doing well, but took a turn for the worse and died in June 2013 at just 11 months old.

Today, Kohana is 13 years old and still resides at Loro Parque, acting as the dominant female despite her inexperience.

Pro-caps are trying to discredit these photos of dolphin pox by saying the pox in wild dolphins do not look like this. However, the one photo they used to compare this was literally the second result on google images and of course it looks absolutely nothing like the photos of those at SeaWorld/The Mirage.

Someone even went as far as telling me my photos are fake because she didn’t “see anything like this” during her “one week” trip to SeaWorld. I showed her a picture of the SeaWorld trainer with a whistle interacting with the pox-infected dolphin, yet she says this proof won’t change her mind.

I’m sorry some people are so stubborn when they’re slapped with the truth, but here’s the very scientific study I linked in my original article—which I doubt they even took the liberty of viewing:

“Poxvirus has been identified morphologically from skin lesions in captive and free-ranging bottlenosed dolphins, Tursiops truncatus and a stranded Atlantic white-sided dolphin, Lagenorhynchus acutus. The lesions, commonly referred to as ring or pinhole lesions, appear as solitary or COALESCED CIRCULAR GREY BLEMISHES. Advanced ring lesions may take the form of black punctiform stippled patterns known as ‘tattoo’. Histologically, the stratum externum is thickened, and there is ballooning degeneration and eosinophilic intractyoplasmic inclusions in the stratum intermedium. These includions contain virus particles which exhibit typical poxvirus morphology. Stress, environmental conditions and general health appear to play a major role in the clinical manifestation of dolphin pox.” – “Dolphin pox: a skin disease of cetaceans” (J R Geraci, B D Hicks, and D J St Aubin; 1979)

So, dolphin pox can take multiple forms. They don’t always look the same.

The argument shouldn’t be “the dolphins in the wild have pox worse than those in captivity” because the point is, captive dolphins have access to “superior medical care” and are supposedly “healthy and happy,” yet they still have pox! If you love these animals as much as you claim, don’t overlook the skin abnormalities. Ask SeaWorld how they’re helping to heal the skin condition and how keeping cetaceans captive will help us heal the wild populations affected by pox.

I was a SeaWorld supporter for a long time. Then I looked honestly at myself and realized I was visiting those parks for my own enjoyment more than anything else. I was being selfish. Yeah, it sucks to admit it. 

You truly think you love those animals. You love being able to go the park and watch animals that you can identify by name. You feel like you know them.

But what you actually love is being close to them. Which is not the same thing. To truly and unselfishly love those animals, you need to put their needs above your desires.

Anticaps say all the time: “You get to go home at the end of the day, but they don’t.” Have you ever thought about what that actually means? Yes, most of those animals were born in captivity, and captivity is the only “home” they’ve ever known. But as you leave the park, off to have dinner with your friends, or go literally anywhere else, those animals are still circling the same barren tanks over and over again (or logging at the surface). This makes up the vast majority of their life - outside of shows and the occasional toy tossed in their pool. Is that fair to them?

Do you want to support a company that supports the Taiji slaughters under the table?

Do you really want to support a company that inseminates female animals whenever they see fit, even if the animals are not physically and mentally ready for a pregnancy? 

Do you want to support a company that doctors facts about wild animals to make captivity seem acceptable? A company that has a whole list of buzzwords in the education manual because they know the reality of what they’re actually doing and want to hide that reality from the public?

Do you want to support a company that flat-out refuses to own up to the awful things they’ve done in the past? A company that acts as though the hatred being spewed against it is completely unjustified?

Do you want to support a company that has proven over the last several months that, without a doubt, they care more about their public image than about the animals in their “care”? (Would these new tank plans exist if Blackfish had never come out? Absolutely not).

Natural Resistance (I) 8.5″x11″ linoleum relief print

Photographs of Type B orcas by Craig Hayhow. Click the link to read the full story: