Alexis Atwater 

Professor Lundgren 

ENG 160 

21 November 2022  

SeaWorld Captivity 

Since 1959, SeaWorld has created a family-friendly park filled with sea life animals. They have had many scandals and backlashes including the well-known Blackfish documentary that has caused a debate on whether their park is morally right. This has attracted many animal activists to try to make a stand against the park to try and give these animals the rights and lives they deserve. Since 1959, SeaWorld has stripped cetaceans from their natural environments and placed them into small, artificial pools that are unnatural for them to live in.  The use of cetaceans for human entertainment has caused severe negative effects on the physical and mental well-being of the animals. For these very reasons, SeaWorld is a terrible place that fosters inhumane treatment of cetaceans and needs to be shut down and stopped. 

Imagine being taken from your home and family and placed in a small closure where you would have to live for the rest of your life. You would most likely feel sad, depressed, and long to be home again. This is what it’s like for the cetaceans in SeaWorld that were taken from the wild. The cetaceans in Sea World were either captured from their natural habitats or bred there. Those that were bred there never get to experience their true natural environment, and the ones captured never get to experience the great life they could have had in the environment they were taken from. Cetaceans are large marine animals, such as dolphins and orcas, that thrive in a large environment where they can swim for miles a day. They have very complex social lives that consist of strong bonds with their family and pods (Prothero). This all gets stripped away from them when they are put into SeaWorld. Cetaceans are highly intelligent animals that experience many complex emotions. It is not natural for these cetaceans to live in artificial conditions at SeaWorld where they have no bond with their pods and where they cannot swim for miles in a vast open ocean. These conditions that they are contained in lead to harmful effects on the cetaceans at SeaWorld. 

SeaWorld is a terrible place and should be shut down because they force cetaceans to live in unnatural conditions that cause a lot of stress for them. SeaWorld captures cetaceans from the wild, or breeds them, and puts them into small pools that have no resemblance to their natural environment. They are artificial, small, shallow, and warm habitats that house cetaceans that are naturally adapted to live in the ocean. These pools that they are kept in also are completely open so that the public can see them. This allows park visitors to tap on the glass and disrupt the cetaceans. According to Heather Rally, a veterinarian, and Dr. Frohoff, a behavioral biologist, “Because of the physical properties of sound propagation in water, such seemingly innocuous behavior can translate into intrusive noise that routinely assaults the animals’ hearing inside the tanks, creating an acoustic insult that is likely to cause chronic stress” (Rally). In the wild, cetaceans wouldn’t be exposed to such noises and taunting people. The conditions of the pools they are kept in cause them a lot of unnecessary stress. They are unable to hide or swim away from stressful situations because the pools are so small and shallow with no hiding spaces. These stress-induced actions often lead to aggressive encounters with other animals in the pool that cause significant harm to the cetaceans.  

 The small enclosures that SeaWorld holds cetaceans in also allow for harmful and unavoidable conflicts with the other cetaceans in the pools. The small and shallow environments the cetaceans are kept in make it extremely difficult to avoid conflicts with the other animals in the tanks. Cetaceans are often observed with scratches and rake marks on their bodies that are caused by aggressive conflicts. According to Heather Rally and Dr. Frohoff, dolphins demonstrate very high levels of aggression due to the stress they face in captivity, which often leads to harmful conflicts with other dolphins (Rally). As we have seen, cetaceans can get very stressed due to the captive environments they live in. This stress is often replaced with aggression towards tank mates that leads to injurious conflicts. These animals are unable to avoid these aggressive encounters even before they start because they are constantly around each other, with no room to swim away or hide. In the wild, these conflicts could easily be avoided by retreating or swimming away. Cetaceans are unable to escape hostile tank mates in the environments in SeaWorld and are forced to either fight back or take the attacks. “What can happen as a result of them being thrown in with other whales that they haven’t grown up with, that are not a part of their culture, is there’s hyper-aggression, a lot of violence, a lot of killing in captivity that you don’t ever see in the wild” (Blackfish). The whales and dolphins are constantly being moved around at SeaWorld and are placed into tanks with others that they are not used to. This can cause a lot of violent conflicts due to stress and aggression or the need to assert dominance. There have been a few encounters at SeaWorld where these conflicts even lead to death. Overall, the dangerous environment SeaWorld holds its cetaceans in leads to harmful and injurious conflicts that you would not normally see in the wild.  

Given the backlash from the documentary Blackfish, SeaWorld was publicly forced to change its dynamic for animal shows. They have turned to showcasing the animals’ behaviors in the pools, rather than putting on shows for the public. SeaWorld states on its website, “Discover the importance of play for orcas and dive deeper into their masterful hunting techniques… You’ll witness thrilling natural orca behaviors and learn more about them than ever before. Orca Encounter will leave you with a deeper understanding of these magnificent animals and will inspire you to care even more profoundly for the wonders of our natural world” (Orca Encounter). This is SeaWorld’s attempt to show the public that they are no longer putting on shows for animals and that seeing these orcas carry out “natural’ behaviors will give people a better understanding of the lives of orcas. This statement is completely misleading and false. The lives that these orcas live in SeaWorld are completely different from the natural lives wild orcas live. SeaWorld claims that the behaviors the orcas’ display, such as hunting, are all natural behaviors for orcas. This is not true, in the wild orcas have very complex hunting skills and strategies and work together with their pods to catch and kill live animals in the ocean. In the documentary Blackfish, they show a real video of an orca pod working together to form waves to knock a seal off a block of ice (Blackfish 26:38-27:24). The hunting techniques they use are very complex and would never be seen or used in the SeaWorld Environment. None of these hunting techniques are truly displayed in SeaWorld and are certainly not “natural” behaviors because they are given all their food by the trainers and staff. Nothing about the environment that SeaWorld provides for these animals is natural. These animals have grown up without all the natural behaviors and lives that wild orcas live. The lives that cetaceans live in the wild are centered around their pod where they hunt, swim, experience the ocean environment, and develop complex social relationships with their pods. None of this is offered by the SeaWorld environment. Instead, their lives consist of swimming in circles in a small pool, looking to humans for food, and being surrounded by humans and other animals that are not pods. SeaWorld deprives these animals of the natural lives they were meant to have and puts them into environments that do not fit their specie’s needs and natural behaviors. Therefore, SeaWorld’s claim that these orcas display natural behaviors, and that seeing them will allow people to gain a better understanding of the natural world, is false. Although SeaWorld is making attempts to better the lives of these cetaceans, they are keeping these animals in unnatural and inhumane environments that do not allow them to carry out their natural behaviors in a natural environment.  

The solution to saving these animals would be to shut down SeaWorld because of the inhumane environments they provide for cetaceans and the damage they cause to the animals. SeaWorld’s attempt to please the public is not enough for these animals. They deserve to live a full life in their natural environment where they can roam freely and carry out natural behaviors. Unfortunately, it is not so simple as just releasing them into the wild. A lot of these animals have spent their whole lives at SeaWorld where they do not have to hunt for food and have not developed the natural behaviors wild orcas do. The solution to this would be to spread awareness about creating more rehabilitation centers for cetaceans that will prepare them for the wild. This would benefit the animals and would allow for SeaWorld to be shut down so no more animals have to suffer in the terrible environments and treatment they provide. Once these animals are reintroduced into the wild, they can be tracked with a tracker to ensure that they are doing well and are healthy.  

In Conclusion, SeaWorld allows their animals to suffer in poor living conditions that cause them physical and mental pain. Since SeaWorld opened, they have been notorious for treating these intelligent creatures inhumanely and have had many scandals that questioned the morality of their park. They have somehow been able to get past all the scandals and illegal accusations and have remained open. The animals there continue to suffer in captivity in an environment not fit for their needs. The park should have been shut down years ago but continues to make a profit off of suffering animals. I hope that the public will take the appropriate measures to help save these poor animals and get them back in the ocean, where they truly belong.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited 

Blackfish. Gabriela Cowperthwaite, CNN Films, 2013. Amazon Prime Video, https://www.amazon.com/Blackfish-Kim-Ashdown/dp/B00G4I0DNG/ref=sr_1_1?sprefix=blackfish+documentary%2Cinstant-video%2C51&s=instant-video&crid=S87NOHGWQ4Z9&keywords=blackfish+documentary+prime&qid=1669072436&sr=1-1 

“Orca Encounter.” Orca Encounter: Killer Whale Presentation | SeaWorld Orlando, https://seaworld.com/orlando/shows/orca-encounter/.  

Prothero, Donald. “Free Tilly! A review of Blackfish, a film directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite.” Skeptic [Altadena, CA], vol. 18, no. 4, fall 2013, pp. 58+. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A354658843/AONE?u=acc&sid=googleScholar&xid=df732d26. Accessed 18 Nov. 2022. 

Rally, Heather D, and Toni Frohoff. “PETA Report – Ca-Times.brightspotcdn.com.” DOLPHIN EXPLOITATION AND SUFFERING AT SEAWORLD PARKS, PeTA, 5 June 2019, https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/3b/3c/6496fa9c43e1b408db246ce1856d/peta-report.pdf.