Seaworld Research Paper

Hannah Ton

Mrs. Braun

Honors American Literature

1 November 2015

SeaWorld Orca Breeding Should Not Be Continued When Dr. Heather Rally, a veterinarian who specializes with marine mammals, visited SeaWorld, she witnessed an orca with a severely collapsed fin and asked an “educational” guide why its fin was bent. The guide replied that it was a genetic trait just like curly or straight hair. However, Rally knows the truth, scientific evidence suggests that the high rate of dorsal fin collapse in captive orcas is due to conditions of captivity. These include spending an abnormally long time at the surface in direct sunlight and continuously swimming in tight circles. Recently, a law was passed by the Coastal Commission to allow SeaWorld to expand

There have been multiple incidents at SeaWorld when killer whales have attacked people. The most popular killer whale attack is the death of Dawn Brancheau by Tilikum, the largest male orca captive at SeaWorld Orlando. This was just one out of three deaths that Tilikum was involved in. He also played a part in the deaths of trainer, Keltie Lee Byrne, and park visitor Daniel Dukes. An autopsy completed by Dr. Joshua Stephany, a medical examiner, determined the injuries Brancheau had sustained after Tilikum had pulled her into the pool. When he was shaking her violently in his mouth in front of a crowd of viewers, her jaw, part of her vertebra, and several ribs were fractured., her left elbow and knee were dislocated. According to the autopsy, the orca was so violent that a portion of her scalp was “forcibly torn from the head” before she died of blunt force trauma to the head, neck and torso, and drowning when the Tilikum yanked her into SeaWorld 's pool Feb. 24, 2010. She had a “complete avulsion of the upper left extremity,” in other words — he tore her arm off. Are a few moments of entertainment really worth all this

Ingrid Visser, the same biologist whose research was misrepresented, and John Hargrove, a former SeaWorld trainer and author of Beneath the Surface visited SeaWorld together and show in a video a mother orca that was seemingly too depressed to nurse her calf. The baby is constantly begging the mother to nurse by bumping his head on her underside, but she ignores him. When the video was released, SeaWorld gave a statement saying that while the calf is no longer nursing, "He does still do the bumping … and many other behaviors that we consider to be a normal part of developing and maintaining his mom-calf bond." When animals are stressed and bored by captivity, they often develop something called stereotypic behavior, a compulsive, repetitive pattern of action that has no apparent purpose. The calf in this video has also been reported continuously beaching itself. His mother has a large bruise where he constantly bumps her with his head. Does this sound like a healthy “mom-calf