Mark Trevino
Silvia Herrera
English 1301.S99
9 November 2015
The Triumphs of Orcas Kept in Captivity Through the decades of the recent past, orca whales have been taken from their original homes in the wild and forced to live and perform in various amusement facilities spanning the United States. The business revolving around these killer whales has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry; this is an industry which possesses many flaws in the way these animals live and thrive together with each other. Orca whales kept in captivity in various amusement parks should be released back into their natural habitat due to the improper conditions in the parks, increased death rates in captivity, and the higher risk of attacks on humans inside …show more content…
After they are taken from their homes, orca whales are forced to live and thrive in large tanks which are only a fraction of a fraction of the size of what they would normally swim in every day in the wild (“Blackfish”). One killer whale, Lolita, is living in extremely inadequate conditions that are even illegal; the facility where Lolita is kept is literally falling apart, and according to former dolphin trainer Russ Rector, is “a facility that has outlived its time” (“Lolita: Slave to Entertainment”). Ironically though, the marine mammal protection act, rather than protecting animals, protects the corporations instead of dealing with the illegal status of Lolita’s tank (“Lolita: Slave to Entertainment”). A second reason is that killer whales are also subject to an increased mortality rate while kept in these facilities. In order to assert dominance over the others, killer whales fight each other in captivity, often biting and scraping their entire bodies (“Blackfish”); these fights often end fatally because the killer …show more content…
SeaWorld states that they “create a controlled setting for science that is impossible to replicate in the wild” (Raja 8). According to Raja, SeaWorld has contributed few studies regarding the natural environment of orca whales. Researchers and scientists say that while the organization has contributed knowledge about orca metabolism, underwater hearing, and reproduction, they still have not contributed anything relating to “the main threats to wild orcas,” which are more important to research in order to keep them alive in the wild (Raja 8). Scientists and conservationists state that the study of orcas in the wild is becoming less invasive and less difficult, making “captive research less important” (Raja 10). Advances in technology allows humans to study the animals from great distances and yet, learn so much information about them- information that SeaWorld says can only be learned by whales kept in captivity (Raja). Todd Robeck, the vice president of one of SeaWorld’s researching centers, tells that SeaWorld’s breeding of orcas in captivity and advances in their state of the art reproductive technology could serve to help the whales survive in case of a drastic decline of their population in the wild (Raja). According to Raja, scientists oppose this argument because the killer whales don’t necessarily have