Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Sea World visit disappoints

I lived an hour and a half away from Sea World San Antonio for almost fifteen years and only visited the park once. Animal lover that I am, watching an orca in a Santa hat, or a dolphin in a tutu jump through a hoop was never my idea of a good time.

Maybe the plentiful San Antonio sunshine softened my sun-deprived Seattle brain, but while I was in Texas for the holidays I finally volunteered to take my family to Sea World. (Strange, since we could have seen orcas in our own backyard in the Puget Sound.) Once we were there, I immediately knew why I could never stomach returning after that first visit over twenty years ago.

I always enjoy visiting zoos because I have convinced myself that they help the public learn about and learn to appreciate wildlife, in addition to doing important animal research. Zoo animals don’t do tricks.

They don’t perform silly skits to loud, tacky music.

The “Shamu Miracles” show we saw had nothing to do with orcas. In fact, the narrator never even told the audience what kind of animals these black and white beauties were, let alone anything about them.

Instead, we listened to twenty minutes of Christmas music while four or five orcas jumped and spun through the water.

(I’m sure some audience members thought they were watching whales, or even really big fish. Actually, orcas are the largest species of dolphin, a marine mammal.)

The sea lion show was just as bad.

At least none of the animals were wearing Santa hats, but they did shake their butts to “Jingle Bell Rock.” That would have been embarrassing for a human and it certainly didn’t generate any respect for marine life.

On the other hand, while the shows are degrading, at least they give these complex and intelligent animals something to do.

According to Naomi Rose of the Humane Society:
They [orcas and dophins] can travel 50 to 100 miles in the day... They live in family groups, they have a whole ocean, and a very, very rich environment that the ocean provides and then what you do in captivity because of their health concerns and because of hygiene, you put them into a swimming pool, into a sterile environment, and it's the best we can do for them in captivity and it's just not good enough...

And so to put them into a concrete environment where it is very monotone and there's simply no variety, no texture, no substance, no depth to the environment why use their echo location, they know where the four walls are, it's an extremely limited environment.
Orcas and bottlenose dolphins living in the "safety" of captivity don't even live as long as their wild relatives do.

The park offered visitors some information about the wildlife. They had a few signs, and trainers explained a bit about the animals’ size and feeding habits, but these were relatively weak efforts.

Sea World possesses and profits from some of the world’s most magnificent and intelligent animals. In order to justify holding them in tiny, chlorinated boxes, marine parks must prove that they are doing more than just entertaining humans.

They must prove that they are bettering the lives of the captive animals' wild brethren by educating people and fostering in them the value of wildlife preservation. From my visit today, I just didn’t get that.

An animal advocate speaking on PBS's Frontline explained it well:
They're learning, however, that it's okay to abuse nature.

So any intelligent person who sees a trained dolphin show whether it's Shamu or Flipper or Keiko or whatever, would have to conclude if they were honest, that what they just witnessed was a spectacle of dominance. That's what's wrong with it. It teaches us that dominance is good. Dominance is right, dominance works and that's the problem.
Seattleites remember the public debate over elephants’ rights that occurred when little Hansa, the Asian elephant, died at the Woodland Park Zoo in 2007. Many American zoos are now closing their elephant exhibits because of their poor success at keeping the animals in captivity.

This same discussion needs to be had about marine mammals. Sea lions singing “Jingle Bells” does nothing to protect animals, it only exploits them and gives park visitors a twisted perspective on marine life and on human's relationship with wild animals. Sea World needs to do a better job justifying its existence.

Comments:

Blogger Carole May said...

Amen. It is about time places like Sea World and the Miami Seaquarium donated a large portion of the money they have made from these marine mammals and created a sanctuary where they can live out their days in their natural waters. Keeping marine mammals captive is abuse. They do not belong in tanks, they belong in oceans. My wish for 2010 is that people stop going to these places and force them to do the right thing.

December 28, 2009 5:15 AM  
Blogger Jessica said...

Thank you for writing this. It gives me hope that more and more people are realizing that marine mammal captivity is wrong and are spreading the word. It should also be mentioned that this practice is dangerous for humans too (take for example the killer whale trainer in Spain who was drowned by a former Sea World animal while training for a show on Christmas Eve this year).

December 28, 2009 3:20 PM  

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