End Killer Whale Captivity

A program of preventive and curative veterinary care and nutrition is something all zoos are required to do by law, it’s not something that parks do out of the kindness of their hearts.

And despite all that care captive orcas are still dying decades before their wild counterparts. And don’t say those are outdated statistics - Of the 34 orcas that have died since 2000, only 1 made it to its thirties, eight made it to their twenties and eleven never saw their fifth birthday. I’m not saying that captive animals never die of natural causes, but if even the best vet care in the world can’t keep these animals alive, then they shouldn’t be in captivity. 

The trouble with making statements like they receive ”excellent veterinary care” is that in 1994 the Marine Mammal Protection Act was reformed, which meant that marine parks where an animal died no longer had to release the necropsy (animal autopsy) report to the public and to the worldwide scientific community. Marine parks now only have to announce a cause of death. Necropsy reports and important details about the animal’s illness and death are now a closely guarded secret (isn’t that a little suspicious?).

These reports need to be made public again before people can say with any authority that the animals in captivity are healthy.

 Have you read Winston’s necropsy that was released shortly before the disclosure ban? I certainly wouldn’t have called him a healthy animal. His cause of death was announced as “Chronic Heart Failure”. Such an illness undoubtedly happens in the wild population too, so the diagnosis wouldn’t raise much concern if a captive animal suffered the same fate.

 BUT, if you look at the rest of his Necropsy report it reads like a horror story,

It includes –

# Decline in appetite and general health six months prior to death

# Acute kidney failure two weeks prior to death

# Skin lesions on dorsal fin and chin

# Ischemic and pale looking muscles

# Acute heart congestion with tracheal fluid.

# Both lungs filled with “Numerous marble sized lesions”

# His heart had “Numerous baseball sized lesions”

# He had a history of heart attacks.

# Swollen liver

# cirrhotic pancreas

# Lesions around the anus.

# Very pale Kidneys that looked like they were an “old animals”

# Profuse bleeding around the adrenal glands

# Swollen and congested thorax

# Enlarged and bleeding spleen.

 It notes that he had the body of a very old animal.- He was just 19 when he died. Yet had access to “restaurant quality” food, “world class vet care”, un polluted water, ect…………

Killer whales are among the smartest animals on the planet, yet every single marine park that has them, keeps them in barren, featureless tanks with plain concrete walls. Trainers do their best to keep the animals entertained through games and toys but it is not nearly good enough. When keepers get called away to do other tasks it is common to see the animals swimming in endless, boring, repetitive laps or logging at the surface. And yes, I have seen this in person, and no I’m not getting cetacean sleep confused with plain old boredom.  

 Marine parks claim that the animals are kept mentally stimulated through doing shows and training. But how can this be true when the animals do the same tricks up to 8 times a day for decades. Because lets face it, the shows may have changed names over the years but the majority of the tricks in them have stayed the same.

 For example, the trick where the trainer holds up a fish and the whale shakes its head as if to say ‘No’, but when the trainer holds up a bucket full of fish the whales nods its head ‘Yes’.  It is a popular SeaWorld trick which always gets a big laugh from the crowds, but it has been performed since at least the mid nineties. The whales are surely bored of it by now.

 In the books Death at SeaWorld, and Song of the Whale, a true story about a whale called Hyak is described. Paul Spong felt sorry for Hyak as he was all alone and would spend all day logging in his tiny tank, not moving. Paul began to reward Hyak with music every time he moved:

 “I’ll reward you for anything you do that isn’t just sitting in that corner. And under those circumstances his behaviour underwent an incredible transformation. This little whale, he’d been sitting there so quietly, all alone, and then I played my records and he became this unbelievably energetic little guy.

Paul played everything for the little whale, Mozart, Miles Davis, the Moody Blues. Hyak seemed to like it all. But what he liked more than anything was music that was new. One day Paul put on an album by the famous Indian Sitar player Ravi Shankar.  He was so interested in that, he responded to it so enthusiastically, so the next day I went down and played it to him again, and we didn’t get more than a few seconds into it when he stopped and went straight back to his corner. He sat there and waited for me to put on something else. He didn’t want to hear what he’s already heard again.  He wanted something new. 

And finally to address your last point, Killer whales in captivity have to go through - having their calves taken away from them at an early age, the isolation of male orcas, the breeding of hybrid and inbred whales, the unnatural levels of raking and aggression, females being bred too early and to often, being kept in small tanks with rarely any protection from the elements, being kept in water that is too warm (Morgan), UV and sunburn exposure, being shut for hours in underwater viewing tanks with nowhere to hide from noisy crowds, families being split up, being forced to live in faux ‘pods’ with whales they sometimes don’t get along with, unnatural diets, AI, having to undergo uncomfortable medical procedures…….

I certainly wouldn’t call all that an “incredible quality of life”