A Bad Week for SeaWorld
On Monday, iTunes released a new trailer for the movie Blackfish. The new trailer encaptures the theme of the movie within a little over 2 minutes. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out here: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/magnolia/blackfish/ or on YouTube here:
Also on Monday, a petition was released to ask SeaWorld to end their orca breeding program. Within the first 2 hours, the petition had over 200 signatures and in a week has grown to over 3,220 signatures!
Monday night Samantha Berg interviewed John Hargrove, both former whale trainers at SeaWorld on Radio Free Palmer. You can find the link to that interview here:
Part 2 will air tonight live at 11pm EDT at radiofreepalmer.org
Wednesday, David Kirby wrote an amazing article titled: Six Ways You Can Help Captive Killer Whales. This is a tool that can be, and will be, used for years to come by advocates to work towards ending captivity in marine parks. His piece, also published on TakePart, was named the “Pick of the Week” by TakePart at the end of the week.
David is the author of the amazing book “Death at SeaWorld”, due out in paperback on July 2.
Death at SeaWorld has continued to gain momentum throughout the week and as of last night had the #1 ranking in several categories in Canada.
To close out the week, SeaWorld announced that they were going to raise their single-day ticket price yet again on Friday. This is the third time in the past year for a total of a 12% increase since July 2012. Tickets last July were $81.99 and have now been raised to $92. Throughout all of these rate hikes, not a single improvement has been made to the tiny concrete tanks that the whale and dolphins live in, or to the habitats of the sea lions and seals.
The clencher of the week occurred Friday morning when SeaWorld Orlando was issued another citation by OSHA. This was a REPEAT violation of the previous citation stating that “The employer did not furnish employment or a place of employment which was free from recognized hazards…”
“At Shamu Stadium pools, animal trainers working with whales other than Tilikum were exposed to struck-by or drowning hazards in that they were allowed to engage in dry work performances with the killer whales without adequate protection.” This resulted in another fine of $38,500.
Last night, a news story broke of an escaped sea lion at SeaWorld Orlando. The news station was “waiting for an explanation from SeaWorld”. If history repeats itself, they could be waiting for a long time. Here’s the story…
Barely two weeks ago, a penguin escaped the new enclosure at SW’s new Antarctica exhibit.
A couple other videos from last week are:
and...
