...Tomas Hannacher 6/18/16 Block 6 Seaworld Under Fire & What It Means For San Diego. Seaworld has been surrounded by media controversy the last several years following an orca activist documentary titled Blackfish. Blackfish, was released in 2013 and originally premiered in the 2013 sundance festival where it picked up traction and attracted Magnolia Pictures and CNN Films who funded Blackfish for a larger audience and screen, where Blackfish flourished and earned over $2 million dollars over two weeks in the domestic box office. Overall, Blackfish mainly investigated the death of an orca trainer at Seaworld orlando. The documentary suggests that Tilikum, an orca was involved in three trainer deaths due to the extreme traumatic experiences...
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...Tilikum, also known as Tilly, is a killer whale who currently resides in captivity at the SeaWorld location in Orlando, Florida. In February of 1991, Keltie Byrne, who was a 20-year-old student studying marine biology and who was involved in competitive swimming, slipped into the pool enclosing Tilikum, Haidi II and Nootka IV while working as a part-time trainer at Sealand. “The three orcas submerged her, dragging her around the pool and preventing her from surfacing. At one point she reached the side and tried to climb out but, as horrified visitors watched from the sidelines, the orcas pulled her screaming back into the pool” (Tilikum). Other trainers tried to respond to her screams by pitching her a life-ring, but the orcas kept her distant...
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...For many years now SeaWorld has provided people with an opportunity to see many sea creatures and Killer Whales perform. These creatures have been trained over the years to perform various times throughout the day. Sea World, however, took these killer whales (orcas) away from their families and home. Throughout the years this has caused damage to the orcas causing rebellion and other forms of defiance. There have been many incidents following the rebellion of these orcas and yet nothing is done about the issue. Sea World should not keep killer whales against their will or keep them captive. Orcas are sea creatures, meaning they belong in the ocean. So why is it that they ended up in large fish tanks held against their will? SeaWorld claims to people that killer whales are better off under their care (Black Fish). Indicating that by taking the orcas from their families, it is rescuing them and giving them better help. Stating that they took them to show others how caring and talented they can be. The park implies that people will learn a lot about life in the sea. Many think that if they come to the park, they are doing a good deed and will be educated on life in the ocean. The employees working on the tours are also obligated to say all these lies to the guests about the park. For instance, a commonly asked question is why some whales have their fins bent, in other words, have a dorsal fin collapse. The park answers to guests that it is normal, but in reality that...
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...living here Food was withheld from him as a training technique, and he regularly endured painful attacks by two dominant female orcas, Haida and Nootka. He was forced to perform every hour on the hour, eight times a day, seven days a week. The constant stress and exhaustion gave him stomach ulcers. If that wasn’t enough he was then put into a tiny round metal-sided module with two other orcas for more than 14 hours until the park reopened the next morning. This is just enough to make a killer whale go insane. Tilikum was capture when he was two years old and for all of the things he’s been put through already for his age is not going to make him grow up as a regular Orca, I mean, no orcas that are held captivity are going to live a normal life. But being the fact that Tilikum is a larger whale, being held in captivity would be taken as a larger impact on him psychological and physically. So, since they would take away his food and get attacked by the two other orcas as training techniques, Tilikum became stress, frustration, and confinement. Which was stirring up an attack to happen sooner or later. On February 21, 1991, Sealand trainer Keltie Byrne fell into the pool containing all three orcas. She was pulled to the bottom of the enclosure by...
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...captivity. The film, told largely by five former SeaWorld trainers, uses highly emotional footage to portray Tilikum as an animal that has been negatively impacted by his life at SeaWorld. Blackfish is advertised as a documentary but, in reality, is little more than propaganda, and rather than providing impartial and balanced information, the film uses inaccurate and deceptive facts in a clear example of how bias is used in the media to portray a certain view to the audience. The film misrepresents the orca species as a whole by saying that "they're amazingly friendly and understanding and intuitively want to be your companion." This implies that killer whales are naturally amicable and respectful to humans. Blackfish shows footage of an orca interacting with a dog to justify this statement, but does not explain that the orca shown in that video was an abandoned juvenile named Luna who had been living in Nootka Sound for five years, where he was constantly exposed to human presence and activity. The interactions with Luna that are shown in the film are not an accurate representation of the average, well-adjusted, pod-dwelling orca. This footage is shown out of context and makes the false claim that killer whales, as a whole, are more wary of human presence and generally keep to themselves in natural conditions to skew the viewer's opinion and understanding of normal orca behavior in the wild. Blackfish criticizes SeaWorld for lying to the general public and denying the animal's...
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...scalping her and dismembered Dawn while breaking many bones throughout her body before he eventually drowned her. Many think this was an act of frustration because he was not receiving fish when correctly doing his behaviors. Dawn was known as a trainer that followed the rules making sure everyone was doing things right. After this accident SeaWorld pinned it on Dawn saying it was a “training error” and she did not follow all the correct rules. Following her death, Tilikum was kept in a tiny cage in the back of the park that made his swimming abilities at an all-time low, he no longer got to communicate with other orcas or people anymore. In this tank, his nose and tail touched both sides of the cage at the same time. After a year he was put...
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...would not let go. All the trainers in Sea World, located in Orlando, Florida, as well as other locations throughout the United States, agreed that Tilikum was well behaved, easy to work with and always eager to please. So what exactly made Tilikum act so violently and take the life of his trainer? There is a reason that there have been no documented deaths of humans by killer whales in the wild – it is obvious that being forced to live and perform in captivity is the reason behind it. It has been argued and scientifically proven that no human being has ever been killed by a killer whale, or orca, in the wild. On the other hand, there at least a dozen documented deaths due to killer whales throughout the world. The main reason this is said to be true is because killer whales, which can grow to be more than 30 feet long and weigh up to 6 tons, are not meant to be kept in tanks and modules that are 20 feet wide and 35 feet deep. These tight living confinements have been proven to cause certain psychoses in animals. (Allen & Flannery 2014) They are essentially giving up the whole ocean for a bathtub. Since Brancheau’s death in 2010, Tilikum has been kept out of the spotlight and has lived a very lonely life. The 2013...
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