So here’s a fun story: I work at SeaWorld. I’m in Entertainment. I’ve worked there for a while now (and yes, I saw this whole shenanigans from start to finish), so here’s a few things I’d like to put forward.
1) I’ve worked at every single show in the park that uses animals (yes, even the show with the dogs, cats, pigs, birds, and kangaroos). I’ve worked onstage, backstage, and in all aspects of them. I’ve seen how these animals are treated both in front of an audience and backstage between and after shows. And let me tell you right now; these animals are pampered. They are cared for so incredibly well by our zoological team. They get fed the highest quality food every single day that has been scientifically figured out of the right proportions to the lbs that they need to eat every single day to maintain a healthy weight (and when you consider that our whales eat over 100lbs of fish a day - EACH -, that’s a lot). If the animals show even the smallest sign of being “off,” the veterinary team is on hand to do immediate checkups to make sure the animals are healthy. These animals are so well taken care of it’s not even funny.
"Oh but you force them to do shows!" Look: You can’t force a 7000lb animal to do
anything. You can’t force a 500lb sea lion to do anything. You can’t force a 10lb river otter to do anything. You just can’t. The idea that we force the animals to do shows is laughable just because of that reason. All of our animals are trained on positive reinforcement; you do something right, you get a reward. You don’t, the trainer just waits a few seconds and moves on. Rewards can be anything from fish, snowballs, ice, toys, rubdowns, and even jello (I’m serious; non-flavored non-sugar jello. They like it). When a trainer sends a behavior, they are literally asking the animal to do something. If the animal wants to do it, they do it. If they don’t, they don’t. It’s that simple. The reward fish doesn’t come out of their daily diet; they get that no matter what. It’s just extra treats.
The big difference is most guests only come maybe once a year or so and only see one show. When you have thousands of shows under your belt, trust me when I say that you’ve seen a show where one of the animals (or even
all of the animals) just don’t want to do anything besides swim around. And that’s perfectly okay. It makes for a super awkward show on the Entertainment side, but whatev. The animals aren’t punished;
theydictate what shows they want to do.
2) No one works there for the pay. If you’re looking for a great paying field, it’s not this. People work there and work with these animals because they love what they do and they love the animals they work with. A lot of people have the same story as me: they went to SeaWorld (or another zoo/aquarium/zoological place) as a kid and fell in love with the animals. They grew up with that passion and it led them to their job. If ANY of the people at the park saw the animals being mistreated (which is several thousand people per park), you can’t honestly believe that we would all still be working there. Exclude a few disgruntled employees, but there would be way more people speaking up if our animals were being harmed.
3) Contrary to most people’s beliefs, there are other animals at SeaWorld than just our killer whales. Try over 26,000 animals across several parks. We also have other cetaceans besides Orcas, you know. I have literally never heard anyone condemn SeaWorld for having beluga whales, pilot whales, false killer whales, bottlenose dolphins, or the other dolphins we have at the park, and all of the above (except for the belugas) are used in shows as well. We have one of the only three colonies of emperor penguins outside of Antarctica in the world. We have over 200 different species of endangered animals in our parks. But according to the news, we only have orcas.
4) So why hasn’t there been immediate changes to the orcas’ habitats? Well probably because these things take a) time and b) money. Currently, the orcas all live in a pretty huge exhibits. Ours in San Diego have a 6.7 million gallon habitat. So what have we been doing in the meantime? Improving the habitats on some of our other animals (you know, the 26,000 other animals). Off the top of my head, I can tell you in the past few years we’ve upgraded our beluga whale habitat, our sea otters habitat, and we just finished upgrading out backstage fish quarantine area and made a new larger exhibit for our cephalopods. We announced that in the coming years, we will be expanding our killer whale habitats at all 3 SeaWorld parks. It will increase their habitat to 1.5 acres. Which is cool for the orcas, I guess, but I personally would have loved to have seen that money go to improving our exhibit for our sea lions and harbor seals or our penguins. Both exhibits are fine, but they could use a fancy new pool as well.
Speaking of pools: Let’s talk about the
Animal Welfare Act. This is a federal law that all animal institutions have to follow that includes “standards to govern the humane handling, care, treatment, and transportation of animals [that fall within the scope of the Act].” These standards include “minimum requirements for handling, housing, feeding, watering, sanitation, shelter from extremes of weather and temperatures, and adequate veterinary care. There’s an entire sub-section on Marine Mammals. What this means is that there is a federal regulation on how big a certain exhibit has to be to house a certain number of animals. This is federally mandated by the Department of Agriculture.
Our birds and our fish don’t fall under this Act (sorry sharks), so instead we also have the AZA, or the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. This is essentially an elite title giving accredidation to zoos and aquariums whose every aspect of their institution is looked over by a group of experts to ensure that a zoo or aquarium is providing the best care possible.
From their website:
The Accreditation Commission evaluates every zoo or aquarium to make sure it meets AZA’s standards for animal management and care, including living environments, social groupings, health, and nutrition. We also make sure that animals are provided with enrichment, which stimulates each animal’s natural behavior and provides variety in their daily routine.
The Accreditation Commission also evaluates the veterinary program, involvement in conservation and research, education programs, safety policies and procedures, security, physical facilities, guest services, and the quality of the institution’s staff. And because a zoo or aquarium needs a strong foundation in order to continue to meet high standards, accreditation also evaluates each institution’s finances, its governing authority, and its support organization. In other words, we look at everything!
It’s a 93 page document that lists every aspect that is looked over by the AZA to get accredited. You can find it here:
https://www.aza.org/becoming-accredited/So why is this important? Well, because
fewer than 10% of the approximately 2,800 animal exhibitors licensed by the United States Department of Agriculture are AZA accredited. This means that less than 280 out of the 2800 places with these animals make the cut for being the best of the best of the best. And guess what?
SeaWorld is one of them. I’m going to throw a few more acronyms at you. SeaWorld also answers to
NOAA, or the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. This is a scientific agency that is part of the US Department of Commerce and deals with all ocean and marine issues. They also mandated the
Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. From wikipedia:
MMPA prohibits the taking of marine mammals, and enacts a moratorium on the import, export, and sale of any marine mammal, along with any marine mammal part or product within the United States. The Act defines “take” as “the act of hunting, killing, capture, and/or harassment of any marine mammal; or, the attempt at such.” The MMPA defines harassment as “any act of pursuit, torment or annoyance which has the potential to either: a. injure a marine mammal in the wild, or b. disturb a marine mammal by causing disruption of behavioral patterns, which includes, but is not limited to, migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering.” What this means: so for one, SeaWorld does not take animals from the ocean. Did we at one point? Yeah, back in the 60s when there was no regulating this; literally everyone was. However, we stopped even before the MMPA was put into effect.
NOAA and the MMPA has a huge impact on our SeaWorld Rescue program. It literally means that every time we get a call about a sick or injured animal on the beach, we have to ask the government’s permission to take it. Once we start getting it back to good health, then the government has to come and decide if the animal is able to be released or not. If the government decides that the animal would not be able to thrive back out in the wild, then the government decides where the animal should go to find a more permanent home. I mentioned the government a lot just now. I just want to stress that we do not decide to just keep any animal that washes up on our shore; it’s all the federal government.
5)
So what’s the deal with sea pens? Well sea pens sound great
in theory. However, think about this: you’d be taking a group of animals who (for some) have lived their entire lives in clean, unpolluted, temperature managed pools where they don’t have to forage for food and most don’t even know what a predator is. Sea pens put them in actual ocean water, which if you lived near the ocean, you’ll know is actually pretty nasty near the shore. You’ve now got fluctuating water temperatures, foreign bacterias that most of the animals who were born in captivity have never had to fight, pollution (thanks humans), and exposure to just every other gross thing in the sea. Sea pens also DON’T keep out smaller animals; it’s impossible. So then factor in that these animals who have been fed sushi-quality fish every day of their lives now can possibly eat wild fish, who might be infected, diseased, or just generally gross.
Also: sea pens require a sea. I know that sounds stupid, but Orlando isn’t next to an ocean. Neither is San Antonio.
So yes, sea pens are a good theory but when it comes down to it, is it really
better for the animals or will it just make
you feel better about yourself?
6)
So why do we not release them. Well because we don’t want them to die. It’s simple enough; there has not been a successful reintroduction of a killer whale who has lived a prolonged life in captivity back to the wild. People love to compare Tili to Keiko (the orca who starred in
Free Willyand bears enough of a resemblance to Tili that most of you didn’t notice when Blackfish kept showing you footage of Keiko in his tiny pool in Mexico and claiming it was Tili), but here’s the bottom line: Keiko didn’t survive. Keiko died within a year of being released. He refused to reintegrate back into the ocean, continually sought out human contact, and inevitably died of pneumonia (which cetaceans get when they’re distressed). Which is really to be expected of an animal who was taken care of almost every day of his life. It’s almost like living in a retirement home your entire life and then suddenly being tossed into the middle of Shanghai with $5 in your pocket. So again; is releasing them really better for
them or will it just make
you feel better?
7) “
Oh but look at those gifs up there of Tilikum being super lethargic!”So A) Killer whales rest and sleep near the surface like that. B) the magic number of “well killer whales in the wild swim this many miles a day!” is a great number, except killer whales in the wild swim that much in search of food. So what do our killer whales not have to do? Forage for food. The trainers also daily stimulate the whales to get their daily cardio and get their hearts pumping, so it’s not like they’re just chilling all day long.
Besides really, a gif of Tili swimming wouldn’t be as useful or meaningful to people with an agenda. I mean, you could swap that out with a gif of a wolf lazily sleeping (either in a zoo or in the wild) and make the argument about how much wild wolves run in a day. It doesn’t prove much of anything.
8)
"But Blackfish said-"Blackfish is one of the best edited films I have ever seen in my life. I mean that without sarcasm; their combination of footage from marine parks around the world set to a handful of disgruntled employees telling some manipulated versions of events that none of them even did or witnessed, set to a good musical score created an emotional driven piece of propaganda was just masterful. The tragedy is that most people believed it, and a supposedly “unbiased news source” CNN aired it, so more people believed it had to be true. Trust me when I say, it’s not. The film brought up a lot of good points about captivity but unfortunately lied and construed the truth about a lot of things to bring up those points.
9)
"Well of course you would stick up for them; you work there and are being fed their lies!" If by that you mean actually having a first-hand knowledge of how the animals are treated, talking to the zoological staff and veterinary staff, and doing my own research on the matter, then yes. I hate to burst your bubble, but there is no magical back area behind the scenes where the trainers and zoological staff all put on their bowler caps and curly mustaches and do terrible things to the animals, despite what some people want you to think. The entire back areas of both the killer whale and dolphin stadiums at my San Diego park are able to be viewed by the public guests; there is no behind-the-scenes curtain where guests can’t see what goes on. Over the years, I’ve become friends with a lot of the zoo staff and they love answering any and all questions about the animals. I’ve gotten to go on stranded animal release and spend hours with our rescue staff about their job and how they care for all the stranded and sick animals (which I will note, most are there because of human cruelty and negligence). Park guests can even take backstage tours to see all the behind the scenes stuff in the park because we literally
wantpeople to see what goes on backstage and see that we seriously mean it when we say that our first priority is our animals.
Listen; captivity is a very grey subject. Hell, I work at the park and I have conflicting feelings about it all. There is no right or wrong answer and there are tremendous pros and cons on both side of the argument. I’m not saying you have to love SeaWorld; I just ask that you don’t blindly bash the hell out of it and at least realize that our animals come first in absolutely everything.
I literally could talk for hours about this; my inbox is always open if people have specific questions that I will answer to the best of my ability. I’m not a scientist, I’m not a zookeeper, and I’m not an expert; I’m just an employee who wanted to be a dolphin trainer since age 3 and absolutely loves that I get to work in a place where I get to see my favorite animals every day.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
(BTW, if you want to bash someone, why don’t you bash those 90% of animal institutions who don’t meet AZA requirements for the health and care of their animals.)
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