Should orcas (killer whales) be released back to ocean or remain the attraction?

[MIST]

Blackfish is winning the battle in the west – now there’s a new war in Asia
11 February 2016

By Dave Neale, Animal Welfare Director , Animals Asia
It’s worth remembering that money is behind most animal cruelty – it’s business and business is always looking for new markets.
Standing on the shoulders of animal welfare giants, the movie Blackfish was the beginning of the end for western animal performance using dolphins and killer whales.
As the number of people in Europe and America willing to pay to see this cruelty diminishes – and with the likes of SeaWorld on the run – it’s worth remembering that they too are customers.
When SeaWorld stopped expanding, its cruel suppliers started look elsewhere.
They looked east.

In recent years we have noted an increasing public demand for seeing whales and dolphins in captivity within Asia.
This demand is fuelled by an industry which sees profit in animal suffering, ripping animals from their families and their natural environment, to incarcerate them in tiny pools and make them perform tricks for their food.
The rise in the use of whales and dolphins in entertainment within countries such as China, Indonesia and Vietnam is incredibly worrying at a time when an end to this horrific cruelty might otherwise be in sight. This is an industry that has had a foothold in the USA, Europe and Australia for many years, and many thousands of individual animals have suffered, and continue to suffer in the name of entertainment.
It’s distasteful to imagine that those people behind this cruelty are cynical enough to look at the world and spot opportunities to continue this horror trade. What they want are areas with little awareness of animal welfare and porous legislative controls that do little to protect captive athnimals from suffering.

In Indonesia, wild caught dolphins are subjected to frequent transport and lives in tiny pools as part of travelling dolphin shows. We can only imagine the stress such transport and time spent immobilised must cause for these individuals.

In Vietnam, wild caught dolphins are subjected to poor living conditions and the indignity of being forced to jump through hoops of fire to entertain a public largely unaware of the stress and suffering such conditions cause.

In China, over 400 wild caught whales and dolphins now languish in the countries ocean parks, with many more ocean parks under construction, fuelling an ever-increasing demand for more wild caught animals. In January 2016, one such facility opened within a shopping mall in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. Encouraging shoppers to stop by and view animals such as wild caught beluga whales stereotypically swimming within their tiny pool. This epitomises the attitude of the industry, using animals as commodities to be used, abused and eventually discarded and replaced when they fall ill and die.

The rise in the ocean park industry in China has fuelled a huge demand for more wild capture within Russia and Japan. Over 200 dolphins, pilot whales and false-killer whales ripped from their ocean homes in Japan, and over 100 beluga whales and at least nine killer whales all being forcibly removed from their families to meet this insatiable appetite for bigger attractions within China.

The finger of blame for this cruelty must be pointed directly at those that are responsible for the wild capture, purchase, and eventual incarceration of these animals. With little or no regard for the fact that these individuals live within complex family groups, within societies built upon cooperation between individuals, empathy for fellow family members and moral behaviours which ensure group harmony and cohesion.
It is these messages of the emotional and cognitive capacities of these intelligent, socially complex animals that we are promoting across Asia in the hope that a largely uninformed public will one day turn their own backs on this industry and help to set free those individuals that continue to suffer in the name of entertainment and prevent further individuals from suffering the same fate.

Take action:
1. Pledge never to watch animal performance
2. Sign our petition to close Grand View Aquarium
3. Donate to our work to end animal cruelty
4. Share this story


https://www.animalsasia.org/intl/me...the-west-–-now-there’s-a-new-war-in-asia.html

 

[MIST]

Tilikum, SeaWorld’s Killer Orca, is Dying

By Tim Zimmermann
PUBLISHED THU MAR 10 11:20:46 EST 2016
Tim Zimmermann has been writing about SeaWorld and marine mammal captivity since 2010, and he was an associate producer and co-writer of the documentary Blackfish.

I have been anticipating and dreading this announcement for years. This week, SeaWorld warned that Tilikum, SeaWorld’s largest and best-known killer whale, is dying. His health is deteriorating due to a drug-resistant bacterial lung infection. “He has a disease which is chronic and progressive,” an emotional SeaWorld vet explains in a video. “We have not found a cure.” The statement appears to be an effort to prepare the public for Tilikum’s death. “Historically, we never put out that kind of stuff unless we were pretty sure they are going to die,” says John Hargrove, who trained killer whales for 12 years at SeaWorld before leaving in 2012.

Tilikum is a special and transformative killer whale. He was netted off Iceland in 1983, at the age of two, and has lived in captivity for almost 33 years now, for the past 24 years at SeaWorld’s Orlando, Florida park. His life has changed how we view SeaWorld and the marine park industry, and changed our moral calculus regarding the confinement and display of intelligent, free-ranging species. (See "Can Captive Orcas Return to the Wild?")



Like most of the world, I had never heard of Tilikum until February, 24, 2010 when he pulled SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau into his pool and brutally killed her. When I learned that he had been involved in two previous deaths it seemed clear he had a story worth telling. So I set out to try and explain how Tilikum’s life led to the death of Dawn Brancheau. I published “The Killer In The Pool” in Outside magazine in the summer of 2010. That led to a call from film-maker and director Gabriela Cowperthwaite, and a chance to help turn Tilikum’s story into the documentary Blackfish, which premiered in 2013. In between, journalist David Kirby published Death At SeaWorld, also an in-depth examination of killer whale captivity.

To tell Tilikum’s story, it was necessary to tell the story of SeaWorld and killer whale entertainment. He was responsible for three human deaths: a trainer at Sealand Of The Pacific in 1991, a late-night trespasser at SeaWorld in 1999, and Dawn Brancheau in 2010. The last death, because of its savagery and because Brancheau was a high-profile SeaWorld trainer, forced us to ask, collectively, sincerely, and for the first time: “Who Is Shamu?” Instead of the iconic, happy killer whale celebrated by SeaWorld and its fans for five decades, Tilikum demanded the world confront his reality, Shamu’s reality, which involved separation from family, confinement, boredom, chronic disease, aggression among marine park killer whales, and aggression against trainers.


“Tilikum's life was the subject of Blackfish, but when I began the film, I was terrified of him. I had nightmares about him,” says Cowperthwaite. “It was only when I learned about his capture, his life in captivity, that I began to understand the depth of this tragedy on so many levels.”

Tilikum made for a sympathetic and compelling character. At 22 feet and 12,000 pounds, he was a would-be ocean king reduced to a court jester with a floppy dorsal fin, splashing delirious SeaWorld audiences at the end of circus-style shows. (SeaWorld recently announced that it would phase out its Shamu shows.) His other, more important role, seemed equally unsettling: to be a prolific supplier of sperm for SeaWorld’s killer whale breeding program. John Jett, a SeaWorld trainer who helped care for Tilikum after his arrival at SeaWorld in 1992, found himself saddened by Tilikum’s existence: bullied by the female killer whales, too big to elude their attacks in a small pool, and always subject to the needs of the marine park business. “For somewhat selfish reasons I enjoyed working with Tilikum, and I have no doubt that his current trainers have sincerely tried to provide him a decent life,” says Jett, who left SeaWorld in 1995 and is now a research professor at Stetson University, near Orlando. “But Tilikum is a tragic figure, and I have often thought about the terror, confusion and stress that Tili has been forced to endure.”

Tilikum so touched our empathy that few in the public, and few on the staff at SeaWorld, could direct anger and blame at him for the death of Brancheau, a gloriously charismatic and well-liked trainer. It was as if everyone understood deep down that it was Tilikum’s circumstances, not Tilikum himself, that killed Brancheau. John Hargrove, who was a senior trainer at SeaWorld Texas when Brancheau died, says that most trainers, including some of Brancheau’s closest friends, did everything they could to care for Tilikum after the incident: “We did feel sorry for Tilikum, because we knew his life would be drastically changed forever. That he would become more isolated, with less contact and connection. We wanted him to be treated with dignity and respect on a daily basis, and not as a monster.” (See "Former Trainer Slams SeaWorld for Cruel Treatment of Orcas.")

It is without question a deep tragedy that it took the death of Dawn Brancheau for the world to stir itself to take a hard look at the lives of the killer whales she trained and loved. But Tilikum never set out to become the symbol of an industry, a relationship between man and nature, gone wrong. He was just a wild killer whale calf in an ocean world whose life was suddenly interrupted and derailed by the human world. And the thing that most saddens me about Tilikum’s plight, and his eventual death, is the life he never lived. I have been never able to see a wild killer whale without thinking of Tilikum, languishing mostly alone in his tank in Orlando. I frequently wonder whether he has any memory of the Icelandic seas, or his mother. I wonder what he would have looked like as a full-grown bull killer whale cruising the open ocean with a regal and knife-straight dorsal fin. I wonder how far he would have traveled, how deep he would have dived, and how magnificent he might have been as a totally wild killer whale.

But he was never given the chance, and we can mourn that. Still, when Tilikum dies he will leave us with something extremely precious, something to redeem his impoverished life in captivity: a desire to give greater moral consideration to other species on our planet, and to re-think the casual ease with which we seek to use nature and all things wild for human purposes. We desperately needed that. For me, that will be Tilikum’s truest and most meaningful legacy.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...-killer-whale-orca-death-seaworld-sick-dying/

 

[PoP]

Tilikum, SeaWorld’s Killer Orca, is Dying

By Tim Zimmermann
PUBLISHED THU MAR 10 11:20:46 EST 2016
Tim Zimmermann has been writing about SeaWorld and marine mammal captivity since 2010, and he was an associate producer and co-writer of the documentary Blackfish.

I have been anticipating and dreading this announcement for years. This week, SeaWorld warned that Tilikum, SeaWorld’s largest and best-known killer whale, is dying. His health is deteriorating due to a drug-resistant bacterial lung infection. “He has a disease which is chronic and progressive,” an emotional SeaWorld vet explains in a video. “We have not found a cure.” The statement appears to be an effort to prepare the public for Tilikum’s death. “Historically, we never put out that kind of stuff unless we were pretty sure they are going to die,” says John Hargrove, who trained killer whales for 12 years at SeaWorld before leaving in 2012.

Tilikum is a special and transformative killer whale. He was netted off Iceland in 1983, at the age of two, and has lived in captivity for almost 33 years now, for the past 24 years at SeaWorld’s Orlando, Florida park. His life has changed how we view SeaWorld and the marine park industry, and changed our moral calculus regarding the confinement and display of intelligent, free-ranging species. (See "Can Captive Orcas Return to the Wild?")



Like most of the world, I had never heard of Tilikum until February, 24, 2010 when he pulled SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau into his pool and brutally killed her. When I learned that he had been involved in two previous deaths it seemed clear he had a story worth telling. So I set out to try and explain how Tilikum’s life led to the death of Dawn Brancheau. I published “The Killer In The Pool” in Outside magazine in the summer of 2010. That led to a call from film-maker and director Gabriela Cowperthwaite, and a chance to help turn Tilikum’s story into the documentary Blackfish, which premiered in 2013. In between, journalist David Kirby published Death At SeaWorld, also an in-depth examination of killer whale captivity.

To tell Tilikum’s story, it was necessary to tell the story of SeaWorld and killer whale entertainment. He was responsible for three human deaths: a trainer at Sealand Of The Pacific in 1991, a late-night trespasser at SeaWorld in 1999, and Dawn Brancheau in 2010. The last death, because of its savagery and because Brancheau was a high-profile SeaWorld trainer, forced us to ask, collectively, sincerely, and for the first time: “Who Is Shamu?” Instead of the iconic, happy killer whale celebrated by SeaWorld and its fans for five decades, Tilikum demanded the world confront his reality, Shamu’s reality, which involved separation from family, confinement, boredom, chronic disease, aggression among marine park killer whales, and aggression against trainers.


“Tilikum's life was the subject of Blackfish, but when I began the film, I was terrified of him. I had nightmares about him,” says Cowperthwaite. “It was only when I learned about his capture, his life in captivity, that I began to understand the depth of this tragedy on so many levels.”

Tilikum made for a sympathetic and compelling character. At 22 feet and 12,000 pounds, he was a would-be ocean king reduced to a court jester with a floppy dorsal fin, splashing delirious SeaWorld audiences at the end of circus-style shows. (SeaWorld recently announced that it would phase out its Shamu shows.) His other, more important role, seemed equally unsettling: to be a prolific supplier of sperm for SeaWorld’s killer whale breeding program. John Jett, a SeaWorld trainer who helped care for Tilikum after his arrival at SeaWorld in 1992, found himself saddened by Tilikum’s existence: bullied by the female killer whales, too big to elude their attacks in a small pool, and always subject to the needs of the marine park business. “For somewhat selfish reasons I enjoyed working with Tilikum, and I have no doubt that his current trainers have sincerely tried to provide him a decent life,” says Jett, who left SeaWorld in 1995 and is now a research professor at Stetson University, near Orlando. “But Tilikum is a tragic figure, and I have often thought about the terror, confusion and stress that Tili has been forced to endure.”

Tilikum so touched our empathy that few in the public, and few on the staff at SeaWorld, could direct anger and blame at him for the death of Brancheau, a gloriously charismatic and well-liked trainer. It was as if everyone understood deep down that it was Tilikum’s circumstances, not Tilikum himself, that killed Brancheau. John Hargrove, who was a senior trainer at SeaWorld Texas when Brancheau died, says that most trainers, including some of Brancheau’s closest friends, did everything they could to care for Tilikum after the incident: “We did feel sorry for Tilikum, because we knew his life would be drastically changed forever. That he would become more isolated, with less contact and connection. We wanted him to be treated with dignity and respect on a daily basis, and not as a monster.” (See "Former Trainer Slams SeaWorld for Cruel Treatment of Orcas.")

It is without question a deep tragedy that it took the death of Dawn Brancheau for the world to stir itself to take a hard look at the lives of the killer whales she trained and loved. But Tilikum never set out to become the symbol of an industry, a relationship between man and nature, gone wrong. He was just a wild killer whale calf in an ocean world whose life was suddenly interrupted and derailed by the human world. And the thing that most saddens me about Tilikum’s plight, and his eventual death, is the life he never lived. I have been never able to see a wild killer whale without thinking of Tilikum, languishing mostly alone in his tank in Orlando. I frequently wonder whether he has any memory of the Icelandic seas, or his mother. I wonder what he would have looked like as a full-grown bull killer whale cruising the open ocean with a regal and knife-straight dorsal fin. I wonder how far he would have traveled, how deep he would have dived, and how magnificent he might have been as a totally wild killer whale.

But he was never given the chance, and we can mourn that. Still, when Tilikum dies he will leave us with something extremely precious, something to redeem his impoverished life in captivity: a desire to give greater moral consideration to other species on our planet, and to re-think the casual ease with which we seek to use nature and all things wild for human purposes. We desperately needed that. For me, that will be Tilikum’s truest and most meaningful legacy.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...-killer-whale-orca-death-seaworld-sick-dying/

They probably should've send Tilikum to the wild. Hearing that he got bullied by female orcas, now that story sounded familiar, come to think of Tilikum's not the only one being picked on by female orcas, Keito was getting picked on too during his time at MarlineLand.

I should also included that former Nickelodeon star/artist Ariana Grande saw the film "Blackfish" and told the fans to stop supporting SeaWorld.

 

[MIST]

SeaWorld to End Captive Breeding of Killer Whales, Orca Shows
The surprise move means the company’s 28 orcas will be the last it holds in captivity.

In a stunning move, SeaWorld has agreed to stop breeding captive killer whales, meaning its 28 orcas will be the last generation owned by the company. SeaWorld also said it would end orca shows at all its entertainment parks by 2019.

SeaWorld made the announcement Thursday morning in a joint statement with the Humane Society of the United States, which negotiated with the company over the past few months to craft the new policy.


The company will phase out its iconic “Shamu” show at all three of its U.S. parks and replace them with presentations focused on the animals’ natural environment, and it will neither receive killer whales from foreign parks nor send whales to them, including parks it hopes to open in Asia and the Middle East.

Instead of breeding orcas, SeaWorld will now invest $50 million over five years to increase its focus on rescue and rehabilitation of marine animals in distress and bringing attention to rescued animals that cannot be released to raise awareness of their plight and educate the public about the growing threats to marine life.

Some of that money will also be dedicated to advocacy campaigns to end commercial whaling and seal hunting and to fighting against shark finning, working to protect coral reefs, and reducing the commercial collection of ornamental tropical fish from the wild.

“As society’s understanding of orcas continues to change, SeaWorld is changing with it,” SeaWorld chief executive Joel Manby said in a statement. “By making this the last generation of orcas in our care and reimagining how guests will encounter these beautiful animals, we are fulfilling our mission of providing visitors to our parks with experiences that matter.”

Company representatives could not be immediately reached for further comment.

“It’s quite amazing,” Humane Society chief executive Wayne Pacelle said in a phone interview. “I really applaud Joel Manby for being an important new leader in taking these very big steps forward for the company.”

“To me, it’s just another big indicator of the power of the humane economy that businesses that are not putting animal welfare at the center of their thinking are at great risk,” he added. “Companies that make animal welfare a central tenet of their work have a great opportunity by doing the right thing.”

For decades, SeaWorld and the Humane Society have been engaged in a bitter war of words over killer whale captivity, making this new rapprochement all the more remarkable.


Pacelle said he began negotiating with Manby in January after the two were introduced by John Campbell, a conservative Republican from Orange County, California, who retired from the House of Representatives in 2014. Campbell and Manby knew each other from their years of working in the automobile dealership industry, Pacelle said.

“He called me and said Joel is a really good guy, and I think you would really like him a lot,” Pacelle said. “And I think that company has to change, and you need to spend some time with him and see if you can get somewhere.”

When they met, Manby, who took the reins of the company a year ago, told Pacelle that he was proud of the animal-rescue work SeaWorld does, Pacelle said.
“I said that was fine, but all your orca activities are stepping on the rest of your work,” Pacelle said. “No one can see that because your company is so defined by the treatment of your orcas.”

As another part of the change in its business practices, SeaWorld will source only sustainably raised seafood, crate-free pork, and cage-free eggs and will offer more vegan and vegetarian options at its restaurants and food service operations.

The news astounded Naomi Rose, a killer whale expert and marine-mammal scientist at the Animal Welfare Institute, who has been fighting against orca captivity for 23 years.
“It’s as gobsmacking as it sounds,” Rose said. “I’m giving full credit to Joel Manby and SeaWorld because this is not a small thing for them. It’s pretty shocking, in a good way.”
Rose said that although SeaWorld did not agree to all demands made by anti-captivity activists, such as retiring its killer whales to coastal sea sanctuaries, “this is what they have agreed to, and I think it’s huge.”
“This is what the Blackfish effect was working toward,” she added, referring to the 2013 documentary that focused worldwide attention on killer whale captivity. “That was the ask: End the breeding programs. And they’ve done that.”
Rose said SeaWorld’s ending of captive breeding accomplishes what a bill introduced in Congress last November sought to achieve and will make it easier to convince marine-mammal parks in other countries to follow suit.

The announcement came just one week after SeaWorld said its killer whale Tillikum was suffering from an incurable lung infection.

SeaWorld ruled out returing its captive orcas to the wild.

“The current population of orcas at SeaWorld—including one orca, Takara, that became pregnant last year—will live out their lives at the company’s park habitats, where they will continue to receive the highest-quality care based on the latest advances in marine veterinary medicine, science, and zoological best practices,” the company said in a statement.

Both Rose and Pacelle said SeaWorld is becoming more transparent under Manby’s stewardship.

“These practices that went long unquestioned have now been questioned, and good people are taking action,” Pacelle said. “We can encourage people to change by writing critical books or filming devastating documentaries.”

That change, he said, will be good for SeaWorld’s sagging reputation: “You do away with lawsuits and legislation and kids writing angry letters to you when you do the right thing.”

http://www.takepart.com/article/201...iller-whales?cmpid=tp-eml-2016-03-17-SeaWorld

 

[PoP]

There was a commercial from SeaWorld that's out for a while.

[YOUTUBE]Yr-6wqOjV9A[/YOUTUBE]

Keiko lasted in the wild just for 5 years.

 

[MIST]

They have learned a lot since Keiko was released.
For example how social these animals are.
In some cases have the orcas been captured when they were young and it´s known what families they came from.
People have played the sounds from one pod or whatever the family is called with relatives to the captured orca and they have seen reactions, the orca recognised the sound from the family.

To release the orcas doesn´t mean they are released in the ocean and then have to manage on their own at once.
Just like in Keikos case they have to take it step by step ,first a smaller fenced place in the ocean where they can start to learn to hunt and other things.
When they can try to give the orca full freedom they now know they should do it to their families.
The fenced place in the sea can be where orcas families pass, maybe every autumn and when the captive orca is ready to manage without peoples help it can be released when the family comes.
Maybe there are orcas who never learn to manage of their own but then they can stay in that part of the ocean it´ll be more freedom there compared to their lifes at seaworld

As it is now the tanks the orcas live in are too small for them in captivity and the water in the ocean is much better for their skin than the water in the tanks.

I read about a dolphin in captivity and it was a natural disaster where the dolphinarium was, everything was destroyed.
the place must have been quite close to the sea where she later was discovered with the wild dolphins .
She managed of her own without people had to teach her how to do it.

What do you think is more important for seaworld, to make money or animals welfare?

 

[MIST]

[video]http://www.takepart.com/video/2016/06/14/sea-pen-explainer?cmpid=longtailshare[/video]

 

[10000005]

free tilikum. Poor whale

 

[MIST]

R.I.P. Tilkum, you are free now.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/s...d/news-story/fb9e4128b47bdf103151acf5464bdc02

www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/the-sad-life-of-tilikum/