Though I don't necessarily agree with everything PETA has endorsed over the years, I continue to follow their feeds on social media to keep up with the progress being made for animal rights movements across the world. I'm sure you didn't need to be following an animal rights group like PETA to hear the news today, though. Tilikum, the whale that inspired the documentary Blackfish, has heartbreakingly passed away.
For a little bit of background knowledge, Sea World has captured whales from the oceans and used them for entertainment in their shows for years. It's been very common for these whales to show signs of depression and aggression upon their capture, but are trained to perform regardless. Their living space has been equated to if we were to be forced to live our human lives in a bathtub. Blackfish narrowed in on the life of a particular whale, Tilikum. Tilikum was the largest whale in captivity (12,000 pounds and over 22 feet long). He was ripped away from his home in Iceland at only two years old and placed in a holding tank for a year where he could barely move. Orcas are known to swim hundreds of miles a day, which is crucial to their existence. He was then transferred to Sealand, a small park in Canada where his tank was not much larger than his previous. His "training" included methods like withholding food, and being forced to perform every hour seven days a week. He shared his living space with two other dominant female whales, whom frequently attacked him. It was at this time when the public began becoming familiar with Tilikum. Keltie Byrne, one of the Sealand trainers, fell into the orca tank and was pulled to the bottom by Tilikum and attacked by all three orcas. She drowned, and Sealand closed their doors and put Tilikum up for sale.
SeaWorld saw the largest male whale to be held captive as an opportunity for breeding their own female whales they were training and made the purchase, regardless of his history of aggression (which we cannot fault him for). SeaWorld held Tilikum in a metal gated prison for 33 years. He showed constant aggression towards people, maybe due to him living in a tank a millionth (0.0001%) of water that he would normally travel in one mere day when in the wild. His behavior included chewing on the metal gates and concrete sides of his tank, as well as floating lifelessly (which has never been reported as a common behavior for orcas in nature). Tilikum eventually took the life of two other people, Daniel Dukes in 1999 and Dawn Brancheau in 2010. After Dawn's tragic death, Tilikum was confined to an even smaller space where he had little to no social contact, but for just a year before SeaWorld thought it was "okay" to have him start performing again. SeaWorld has been cited for violating safety laws and appealed them. In fact, they have over 600 documented incident reports of dangerous orca-trainer encounters. Orca aggression towards humans in the wild is nearly non-existent. SeaWorld finally announced that they would end their orca-breeding program. However, this was likely after knowing that due to his mental and physical illness which was announced around March of 2016. After being bread 21 times and seeing his miserable and hopeless life, Tilikum would never make it to see the wild again; SeaWorld knew it—they simply wanted the war against them to end so they could again become more profitable.
If Tilikum's story isn't enough of a wake-up call for us I'm not sure what is. We have to start thinking differently, I mean drastically differently. We have to stop believing that animals are here for our use, let alone for our entertainment. I'm desperately asking us all to change the way animals are seen, used, and abused. Put yourself in their shoes, in Tilikum's.
