I’ll be the first to admit it—I’ve been to SeaWorld, I’ve been to zoos, I’ve been to circuses. But the naive young child fascinated by large wild animals in cramped enclosures is no more. The SeaWorld management, too, is finally realizing the error of its ways. A “U.S. chain of marine mammal parks, oceanariums and animal theme parks," SeaWorld is renowned for its theatrical performances and zoological displays featuring marine animals. Zoos and for-profit animal showcasing establishments have been practicing a similar model for centuries, marketing reductionist, palatable “wildlife” as entertainment for the masses. And it’s a problem we need to fix.
SeaWorld, in particular, came under fire in 2013, when Gabriela Cowperthwaite released her critically acclaimed documentary "Blackfish." Utilizing testimonies from ex-employees of SeaWorld, vivid footage of SeaWorld mishaps and performances as well as interviews with experts in the field, "Blackfish" details the life and misadventures of captive orca Tilikum as well as everything wrong with keeping marine animals in captivity. Tilikum has been responsible for the deaths of several humans, including a senior trainer named Dawn Brancheau. The documentary led to public scrutiny and outcry over aquarium conditions, animal breeding, orca sourcing, and lack of educational value. As Jacques Cousteau said, “there is as much educational benefit in studying dolphins and whales in captivity as there is in studying humans by observing prisoners in solitary confinement."
People and potential customers everywhere decried keeping whales in captivity—the sad lives led in shallow, chlorinated bathtubs kept dark, forced to perform, resulting in a multitude of health problems and detrimental psychological impacts. And "Blackfish" was just the first hiccup for SeaWorld, to put it mildly. The negative publicity and widespread awareness of the treachery of these kind of practices led to Mattel’s Barbie, Virgin America, SouthWest Airlines, and British Airways cutting ties with SeaWorld, followed by a slew of class action lawsuits being filed against SeaWorld. People across the country boycotted SeaWorld, schools cancelled trips, musicians cancelled appearances at the parks. Attendance is at an all-time low, dropping over thirteen percent since the release of Blackfish. Profits too have fallen by over eighty percent, and stock prices have plummeted severely.
Ever since the truth has been discovered and publicized, SeaWorld has been scrambling to deny all the allegations made against it. Amidst misquoting and misrepresenting a whole bunch of unrelated research of scientists trying to do some good, SeaWorld has pages and pages of material on their website trying desperately to disprove everything, unsuccessfully. President and CEO Joel Manby even admitted to SeaWorld employees posing as animal right activists in order to spy on opponents. Animal rights activists’ campaigning and years of critical publicity has finally led to some sort of concrete result and forced the administration to actually implement changes rather than the constant resorting to denial.
On March 17, 2016, current SeaWorld CEO Joel Manby published an op-ed in the LA Times detailing the so-called accomplishments of SeaWorld, along with an announcement that the company would be ending its orca breeding program. He claimed that SeaWorld was responsible for changing the attitudes of people towards orcas, and admitted that “a growing number of people don’t think orcas belong in human care." Among several “historic” changes SeaWorld is implementing, Manby described how SeaWorld hadn’t collected wild orcas for decades and the generation currently in their care would be the final one, since setting them free was not a viable option. Also detailed in the op-ed, was the phasing out of theatrical orca shows in favor of an orca experience focused on the natural environment of the whales, and a partnership with the Humane Society to work against commercial marine animal destruction. SeaWorld truly believes that the real enemies of wildlife are only poaching, pollution, unsustainable human development, and man-made disasters such as oil spills—failing to mention the effect of zoos and aquariums.
While SeaWorld’s changes seem minuscule, they are the first steps in a positive direction. There is much work to be done for SeaWorld, but the problem doesn’t end with it or marine parks like it. Circuses and zoos have been exploiting animals for entertainment for centuries. Just because there hasn’t been a hit tell-all documentary about them, doesn’t lessen the problem or make them cease to exist. SeaWorld commits its crimes in a marine enclosure, but other animal entertainment settings do the exact same thing on land. Wild animals, captured and tamed and reduced, packaged into digestible entertainment, and stored carelessly in isolated and tiny enclosures, denied most of what they would experience in their natural habitats.
And why? People don’t learn anything from physically seeing an animal—certainly not any more than they’d learn from pictures or videos of the exact same animal where it’s meant to be. Every day, pictures and videos surface of polar bears shrinking in size and deteriorating in health living in hot enclosures—as if global warming wasn’t enough. There’s infinite evidence of the harm living in captivity and used for entertainment has on animals, even amidst cries that this fruitless exercise is in some way “saving” the animals from inevitable extinction. We need to transcend to learning from a distance, and not just using the animals for momentary excitement on an uneventful day. The ‘"Blackfish" effect’ needs to sweep the entire animal entertainment industry, educating people and making significant change.
