captivity

Educational?......
......or Entertainment?

Winnie, at SWO, doing a high spiral-breach while squirting water from her mouth...something you'd never see in the wild.

You clap in awe as "Shamu" douses you with water with a flick of her tail, or cheer as "Namu" leaps high up, touching a target pole suspened 40 feet above the water on command. SeaWorld and other Marine Parks claim orcas in captivity is educational....on what? How far these animals will go to please us?

Kalina, the first "Baby Shamu", leaps in SWF.

In the wild, orcas breach, lob-tail and porpise as they please, for fun, for courtship, and for excersize.

In captivity, orcas breach, lob-tail and porpise when they are told to, to earn their dinners and attention.

In the wild, orcas hunt live fish, giving chase to salmon that grow to 2 feet in lenght and weigh an average of 15 pounds.

In captivity, they are fed herring which grow a mere 6 inches and weigh a pound or less...the salmon orcas eat in the wild FEED on the type of herring that they are fed in captivity.

Those examples are just a scrape of the differences between captivity and the wild. And that statement is leinant. I will say this straight out now, and it is my humble opinion, and then you may read on to see why:

Captivity is NOT educational on Orcas.

Alot of people would and probably will attack me for that. But I really don't care. Its the truth. In fact, captivity isn't educational on just about ANY cetacean. No one has ever given me any reason of 'fact' for me to change my opinion that captivity is in NO real way, especially at present date, educational on these animals. If you have a different opinion on captivity, or share some of the same with me, please drop me and E-mail so I may add it to "What YOU think" part of my page! ALL opinions, no matter how harsh or rash, are welcome.

I want you to take a look at the picture to the right. On the farthest to the right is Corky, a 34yr old female from WA, followed by five smaller males and females in SWC. They are all doing identical backflips, extremely high out of the water, in a lined row, together, on a cue, in front of live audience adding up to the thousands in a tank smaller than one BILLIONTH of the space they'd have in the wild. Now you tell me, what part about that, besides the body of the orca itself, is natural???

Need I say anything?

Can anyone tell me what in the photo to the left, taken in SWF, is educational?

Looks a lot more like entertainment to me...

What you see in the wild...

What you see in SeaWorld...

A southern resident leaps for joy in Haro Strait, Puget Sound, WA, amazing onlookers.

Two orcas in SWC do front flips on command, four times a day to amaze crowds in their limited world.