How Killer Whales in The Seaworld Are Suffering

I believe parks similar to SeaWorld should be closed down immediately. Firstly, they cause unnecessary harm to the killer whales who are kept there. Secondly, due to the bad conditions they are kept in, these animals sometimes cause injury or death to humans.

Orcas have a larger paralimbic cleft than humans. This is the part of the brain that deals with emotions. An obvious inference from this would be that whales have a more complex emotional system than humans do. At parks like SeaWorld, babies used to be taken to different tanks or even to separate parks. This can lead to the whales becoming angry and sometimes fighting with each other. In extreme situations, whales have tried to commit suicide by jumping out of their tanks.

A whale named Tilikum, who was taken from his family when he was three years old, was constantly attacked by the two female whales that shared his tank at Sealand of the Pacific (a park like SeaWorld). The tank Tilikum was kept in contained 0.0001 percent of the water he would have travelled in one day in the wild. If Tilikum did not perform a trick correctly, food was withheld from not only him but also both of his tank mates. As a result, the other two female orcas raked Tilikum by scraping their teeth along his side.

Killer whales are naturally friendly creatures – they want to be your companion. It is only when they are put in captivity that they start to attack humans. Evidence suggests some whales at SeaWorld became so bored and depressed they ‘played’ with the trainers. Many trainers were killed in this way. In the case of Tilikum, the whale killed three trainers – they were taken to the bottom of the pool, were scalped, dismembered and drowned by the whale. To this day there are no accounts of killer whales killing or even harming anyone in the wild.

Some people would suggest that SeaWorld should stay open because when people go to SeaWorld, they can experience the whales first-hand. This means that if they heard about another way in which marine animals were being mistreated - for example whales and dolphins being harpooned in Japan – they would remember their experience at SeaWorld with the whales and have strong feelings against it. SeaWorld now say that they will no longer separate baby orcas from their mothers.

There are two main Christian views on animal ethics. Some Christians that believe in the idea of Stewardship believe Jesus told us humans were made by God with the responsibility of looking the weak and helpless – and this includes animals. However other Christians believe in the idea of Dominion. Dominion is the belief that animals were created by God for humans to do with as they please. A piece of evidence to support this would be the way God let humans name the animals, giving humans control over them.

Overall, SeaWorld and similar parks should be closed down as they treat the whales in a horrendous way with almost no concern for their well-being. It is immoral to place thoughts of profit before the lives of these strongly emotional animals.