SeaWorld To End Orca Breeding Program (latimes.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Amusement park operator SeaWorld Entertainment announced on Thursday that it is ending its orca breeding program. The announcement comes amid growing pressure from activists who found that whales and their trainers weren't treated properly. A 2013 documentary Blackfish cited a number of violent incidents at the amusement park. In an op-ed Joel Manby, President and CEO of SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment laid bare the details on why his company is shutting down the orca breeding program. "Customers visit our marine parks, in part, to watch orcas. But a growing number of people don't think orcas belong in human care. [...] Now we need to respond to the attitudinal change that we helped to create -- which is why SeaWorld is announcing several historic changes. This year we will end all orca breeding programs -- and because SeaWorld hasn't collected an orca from the wild in almost four decades, this will be the last generation of orcas in SeaWorld's care. [...] More than 3,000 species are endangered, and hundreds are lost every year. Americans and thoughtful people everywhere need to acknowledge these fundamental problems. SeaWorld takes seriously its responsibility to preserve marine wildlife. That's why we are partnering with the Humane Society of the United States. Together, we will work against commercial whaling and seal hunts, shark finning and ocean pollution.

Comments

Re:good deal

[captaindomon]

Really depends on the zoo, to be completely honest. AZA accredited zoos like San Diego and Hogle Zoo are pretty good, and they provide entertainment options for the animals like enrichment activities, etc. They also help kids to understand what we are destroying, which is absolutely critical. People don't care about animals if they've never seen one. But many zoos are not accredited, and many of those zoos are absolutely horrific.

Re:That's some awful stuff

[amicusNYCL]

That's a nice word, "roughly". We've seen 100 year old wild orcas. The orca that has currently been alive the longest in captivity is a 51 year old female, Corky.

Corky is a 51-year-old female orca at Sea World San Diego. She is the longest-held captive orca in the world and is the largest female orca in captivity. She is now the only survivor from the Northern Resident captures. Around the age of four, Corky was captured in Pender Harbor off the coast of British Columbia on December 11, 1969. From there, she went to Marineland of the Pacific and lived with three other orcas. However, the two orcas who she was captured with died after three years and she spent most of her time at Marineland with an orca bull named Orky. Corky has been pregnant seven times, resulting in four live births from 1977 to 1985 (with two failures in 1986 and 1987), none of which survived the first two months of life.

I don't know about you, but a 100% infant mortality rate sounds "roughly" higher than what you would expect in the wild. Let's go over some others who have died in captivity. "Baby Shamu II" lived for 12 days. Bingo was 31 when he died of a respiratory illness. Freya was 35 when she died of an unknown illness. During her time in captivity she had 4 stillborn calves and 1 that survived.

Gudrun was captured near Iceland in 1976 and moved to Florida in 1987. Gudrun gave birth to Taima in 1989 (Taima's father died the next year at age 20). In 1993 Gudrun gave birth again, to Nyar. Nyar was often mentally and physically ill, and Gudrun tried to drown her several times. In February of 1996 Gudrun tried to deliver another calf, but after 20 hours of labor it was dead and had to be removed with a crane, which caused bleeding in Gudrun and her dorsal fin collapsed. She swam to a gate to try to make amends with her abused daughter Nyar, and died 4 days later. Nyar died several weeks later in April at the age of 2. Her oldest daughter Taima tried to drown several of her own calves after watching her mother do that to Nyar. Taima died in 2010 following complications after another stillborn birth.

Here, you can read some more about them if you'd like. I'll be the first one to admit that I'm not a marine biologist, but in the wild when orcas are traveling in family pods I'm pretty sure that they don't have these kinds of problems on this scale. If an animal as large as an orca with such a long gestational period had a birth survivability rate of around 90% I don't think they would last too long. And a new mother isn't going to try to drown her calves because the entire pod takes responsibility for raising the calves. Wiki reports the wild mortality rate for the first 7 months as between 35% and 50%, not 90%. Wiki also says "Captive killer whale lifespans are typically significantly shorter, usually less than 25 years; however, numerous individuals are alive in their 30s, and a few have reached their 40s." The citations are on the article. But, there's one of those words again, "typically". Just like "roughly".

What we know is this: a life in captivity is no way for an orca to live. They belong in the ocean, not in a tank. They aren't pets, they're whales. They aren't here for our amusement.