Sea World

[wolfy-hound]

Sorry but this is a real issue to me that people still don't get it.

Seaworld does right by their whales. Period. The enclosures aren't the open ocean but they are extremely large and extensive AND designed specifically to have echoloction bounce so that they 'feel'(hear??) even larger than they already are.

Captive breeding does nothing for conservation? BS. Almost EVERYTHING we know about orcas, health, breeding, aging, health issues, parasites, etc is directly from captive orca programs. All those rescues done(primarily by Seaworld too) are by-and-large successful because of the captive programs.

The whales that were captured were from coastal ppopulations, that primarily live in the more shallow and restricted waters (and thus easier to catch too), not the open ocean pods in the first place. The current animals were raised in captivity. The training programs are geared to help stimulate the whales and keep them engaged and not bored. The dolphins at Marineland are now rather pathetic, since they stopped all the 'shows' and only have them doing whatever it is they feel like doing. I don't mean "They're boring now", but all they do is drift about all day, where before, they engaged with visitors, looking at everything going on, inventing games with each other, etc.

All the research, all the rescues, all the information and all the people who decide they love orcas and want to support conservation from visits to Seaworld will end. You know why people give a poo about orcas? Because Seaworld, that's why. "Go see them in the wild!" is not a viable option for 99% of people AND it does not inspire kids to see a few fins trailing through the water if the whale watching boats have a poor day of viewing. Not to mention how much the whale watching industry harms things themselves. In 20 years, people will care about wild orcas about as much as people care about wild populations of newts.

The ideal in some people's world is that every animal is roaming free in the perfect environment. That would mean no pets, no animal industry of any kind, no zoos and no one caring about the animals that have needs out in nature either. It's all well and good to think that people would donate money to have research on wild populations of animals... but they don't donate now and they won't donate without anything in front of them to engage them either.

And all the people who jumped on the bandwagon after Blackfish shouldn't say one single word about Seaworld "cowtowing" to HSUS now. You guys threw them under the bus, leaving them zero ability to salvage anything. Their only choices were to give in to stop the hemmoraging of money caused by HSUS and their cronies and all the hangers-on saying they should be shut down. You want people to support us when HSUS attacks keeping reptiles. You think that it's wrong for HSUS to put out false information about keeping reptiles. But then you supported it when the victim was Seaworld. Seaworld isn't "working with" HSUS. They're trying to keep themselves afloat by making enough concessions that they won't shut down entirely.