#captive cetaceans

How about focusing on the current belugas you have that haven’t even been moved into their sea open before campaigning to “free” the other 300 in human care. We don’t know yet how the long term care costs are going to work out or how these whales will adjust to their new environment. Not to mention their beluga sanctuary can hold 12, so where are the other 290 going to go? The National Aquarium has been looking for a place to build a sea pen for their dolphins for almost four years now with no luck.  How about campaigning to clean up our oceans or fighting climate change? 

Trua.

I would like you to do thorough research instead of relying on “top 10 things seaworld doesn’t want you to know!” and Blackfish and taking them for granted. Why? I’ll tell you why - as long as anyone who sees this remains civil and, in case they want to argue, can bring up valid points with proof, just like I will.

(using negative tags to bring up the attention of my targets)

Almost no one who throws sh!t at SeaWorld EVER acknowledges other marine parks or the situation of orcas in the wild. “It’s all the same”, they think, but they couldn’t possibly be more wrong. They paint SeaWorld like the hell it is not, make videos and rants ONLY about it, masking the truth out there. Today, I will gladly explain to you what other parks are like:

In Miami Seaquarium, Lolita lives in isolation in one of the smallest tanks ever (still much bigger than her late partner’s, Hugo; he killed himself driven crazy by the lack of space), and has not seen any other orca in decades. The park allows people to walk straight to the glass of the tank, and Lolita has shown aggression to guests peeking in, signaling stress. She is overly sensitive to change, so any change in schedule makes her anxious. With that behavior and her 52 years of age, she cannot be moved elsewhere without risking her mental and physical health.

In Moskvarium, three orcas were pried from their family when they were around 5 and 6 years old instead of 1 or 2, which is the usual age of capture. They are full-blooded transients and at that age would have already participated in hunts, which is why they are very aggressive toward one another, as they’re not even from the same pod and have no defined social structure. The oldest female, Narnia, has been put out of shows and public view altogether several times and people suspect it’s due to disease or even pregnancy. These are very large animals (10 year old Nord is almost as big as any adult orca you see at SeaWorld) and the park will have problems with their behavior as they grow.

In Mundo Marino, Kshamenk is in a situation all too similar to Lolita's. He lives in isolation, accompanied only by a couple dolphins and secluded in a small tank. The show pool is pretty small for an animal his size, however he is often kept in a circular back pool where he can barely swim in a straight line - as a large bull orca, it’s anything but healthy for him. Mundo Marino always claims he was rescued during shows, even though he was actually captured. Argentina refuses to move him anywhere.

In Marineland Canada, 42 year old Kiska is kept alone in a fairly large tank, though she doesn’t even have the company of dolphins - only her trainers. All her calves have died, and she has been alone since 2011. She no longer participates in shows as the park claims she is “retired”, even though other orcas her age and older (namely SeaWorld’s orcas Ulises, Katina and Corky II) are very athletic. She has been seen bleeding from her tail and rake-like marks were spotted on her body, which should be enough to tell she scratches herself on walls and not with the intention to relieve an itch. In this park, Kandu 7, a deceased male that sired all the calves there, was often put in a literal fishbowl where he refused to even move.

Oh, but enough talking about orcas - that is another thing people do that bothers me. Dolphins, belugas, pilot whales, hello? No love for them? Are they not pretty, smart and interesting enough for the backlash? Sometimes, they have it worse, especially considering the Taiji hunts.

In Parc Astérix, Femke, a 32 year old dolphin, is just floating lifelessly and nobody pays attention to her. During shows, she just lounges around, motionless. The trainers do waterworks with the other dolphins, and you can see them just crashing into Femke without a care in the world. Like she doesn’t even exist. Her body is also very deformed, so much that even her dorsal collapsed, and I have never heard of any staff at the park doing anything about it.

There is a marine park which I unfortunately do not remember the name of (the footage I saw came from a channel that was deleted, so I can’t check) that holds a small beluga pod, and one of the animals is heavily bullied by the others. Its skin was all torn, and all throughout the video it was bleeding from its mouth and other wounds, cowering away from the other passing belugas. This is the kind of aggression that should be acknowledged. I don’t have more background on this, however.

In Marineland Mallorca, and hang on because this is the worst of all in my opinion, they use their own... “unique” methods to train dolphins. All parks use positive reinforcement to train their cetaceans: give them a signal, guide them, and give them a treat if they did it correctly - just like training a dog. Here, however, the dolphins are beaten. The “trainers” don’t give a f*ck about the animals and treat them like slaves; the kind of abuse you see in circuses. They scream profanity at them and smack them if they don’t do as told, and they get little to no rewards during training.

We also have the opening marine parks in China and Japan, two countries which are now capturing wild orcas older than at least 5 years old much like Russia. These are kidnapping transient orcas, another worrisome issue, and don’t seem to plan on stopping soon. China wants the orcas, not for the purpose of entertainment only, but for the purpose of breeding and selling the newborns to other parks.

Not long ago, they illegally captured almost 100 belugas and 11 orcas in Russia and are keeping them in tiny, frozen tanks in what’s known as the “whale jail” - one orca died of skin disease because of the cold (a 1 year old male, Kirill). These will be released soon, but it’s a taste of what’s to come.

Keet’s frontflip, back in 2012! He does it a little low, though, haha. Damn, gotta love this boy. 

Empty the Tanks is not a science-based movement. It anthropomorphizes the animals to give them needs or wants that we cannot say they have.

Empty the Tanks also advocates for the either the release or euthanasia of all captive whales, neither of which are "animal-first". Whales that have lived their whole lives in captivity will never be able to survive in the wild by themselves. There are no sanctuaries.

Captive whales at SeaWorld (etc) have mental stimulation and trainers that love and care for them. They are not being "tortured" (of course there will always be exceptions of animal abuse cases such as with Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut). And life in the wild isn't perfect either, which I find is a common mentality among movements like these.

I do not agree with capturing wild whales for entertainment, but ultimately, the end goals of these kinds of movements are not activism. They are performative.

I hope he rests well. Swim free, my brother. 🩵