It’s time to boycott SeaWorld for its heartless and inhumane treatment of orcas, and put an end to the depraved criminal enterprise which cruelly enslaves these noble beasts of the sea as mere circus performers.
SeaWorld’s snidely announced this week it will appeal a bevy of OSHA fines for deliberately endangering its trainers -- willing participants in the atrocity -- but the cruelties this corporation knowingly inflicts 24/7 on its captive whales goes far and above those relatively minor offenses.
And that includes penalizing orcas with food-deprivation, as well as forcibly separating calves from their mothers who, in the marine animals’ natural habitat, would otherwise stay by their parents’ side well into their teens.
Starving or orphaning orcas to expand profits is but two of many callous practices that double-talking corporate heads smugly disguise and deny, but which is happening in every place that SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. maintains its *amusement* parks.
Those who have witnessed the removal of an orca’s youngster from its mom say it’s such a heart-wrenching event for both mother and child that they both will mourn for months in each other’s absence and sometimes even die.
Which begs the question: How entertaining is that?!
Indeed, according to whale experts, biologists, and even former employees, the abuse and neglect that all orcas suffer at the hands of their captures is so severe it causes long-lasting emotional trauma, for which most will require daily psychotropic medications in order to cope and perform.
In some cases, however, sedating disturbed orcas for depression, self harming, and aggressive behavior still can’t prevent homicidal rages from bubbling to the surface, often which they direct toward each other, and, every now and then, against their unwatchful keepers.
That’s precisely what happened to Dawn Brancheau in 2010, say fellow orca handlers who helplessly stood by as king-sized killer whale Tilikum yanked her from the edge of his too-small pool and deliberately kept her underwater so she would die.
Ever since then, SeaWorld executives and their attorneys have tried to cover up Brancheau’s murder by insisting the killer-whale who vengefully slew her was “just playing” and got carried away with himself.
Yet they knew Tilikum’s fury at being in captivity and his hatred for his jailers was so intense that he was not authorized to be used in any of SeaWorld’s interactive shows at the facility where he was imprisoned.
Leaked footage of the 2010 attack -- which was by no means an isolated incident -- shows the psychologically damaged orca snuck up on trainer Brancheau and not only intentionally drowned his victim but dismembered her as well, in possibly the goriest example of a creature, broken by years of abuse, lashing out at those who have repeatedly wronged him.
Some of the petty fines imposed on the multibillion-dollar corporation this month in fact relate to that shocking episode, but these obviously fall far short of addressing what’s really at the heart of the matter: The fact that money-grubbing marina managers have no heart at all, let alone a conscience.
For this reason the time has finally come to strike the cruelest company the planet has ever known where it really lives -- in its wallet -- and boycott SeaWorld, until it lets all its orca inmates go.
