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

That's some awful stuff

[Notorious G]

Together, we will work against commercial whaling and seal hunts, shark finning and ocean pollution.

I'm no environmentalist or anything but some of that stuff is truly barbaric.

Re:That's some awful stuff

[Aighearach]

...that stuff is truly barbaric.

Absolutely. And for Orcas, this seems obvious to me. Animals generally should live longer in captivity than in the wild, because they're protected from predation, have a high quality diet, medical care, etc. Orcas in captivity are living half their wild life expectancy. That makes it obvious how disgusting it is.

If you think keeping zoo animals is good generally, even in that context the situation with orcas is barbaric.

Re:That's some awful stuff

[Anonymous Coward]

Orcas in captivity are living half their wild life expectancy.

Multiple studies have shown that the life expectancy of orcas in captivity is roughly the same as those in the wild:

- D. P. DeMaster and J. K. Drevenak, "Survivorship patterns in three species of captive cetaceans", Marine Mammal Science 4(4): 297-311, 1988.
- T. R. Robeck, K. Willis, M. R. Scarpuzzi, and J. K. O'Brien, "Comparisons of life-history parameters between free-ranging and captive killer whale (Orcinus orca) populations for application toward species management", Journal of Mammalogy 96(5): 1055-1070, 2015.
- J. Jett and J. Ventre, "Captive killer whale (Orcinus orca) survival", Marine Mammal Science 31(4): 1362-1377, 2015.

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.

Re:That's some awful stuff

[amicusNYCL]

From my point of view, a cattle will "amuse" a few thousand person's mouth with his meat. On the other hand, the orca from TFA amuse a few million person each fucking years. So, again from my point of view, using orca is a over 1000x time more "morally right" that using cattle for meat.

How about just not having the orcas in captivity? If you want to eat meat, fine, go eat meat, but is it really a vital necessity to keep orcas in tanks? Why do you have to choose between one or the other, which one is "more right"? How about just not fucking putting the whale in a tank by itself for 30 years? Why is not doing that not an option?

Re: That's some awful stuff

[jxander]

Vegans and vegetarians can only exist in a society of carnivores (well, omnivores). Alone, the veggies would fail.

The primary benefit of eating meat is the nutritional density. A but of beef provides more energy than all the kale you can eat.

How many vegans do you know with physically or mentally demanding jobs? How many builders, roofers, personal trainers? How many professors, neural surgeons, aerospace engineers? Not many, I'd wager. And the few that exist require extreme dedication and nutritional study to keep it up.

If you want to live a veggie/vegan life, go ahead. It's certainly your right to do so. But don't act as though the whole world could live like that.

Re: That's some awful stuff

[evilviper]

The primary benefit of eating meat is the nutritional density. A but of beef provides more energy than all the kale you can eat.

A 4 oz Beef Ribeye Steak has 280 calories.
4 oz (dry) of White Rice has 448 calories.

How many vegans do you know with physically or mentally demanding jobs?

Olympic athletes all "carb-load", they do NOT meat-load. And dare I mention Sumo wrestlers? The vast majority of their calories come from rice, with a little bit of meat really only for flavor.

With a diet of rice, potatoes, beans, pasta, etc., it's quite easy to be physically fit without eating any meat, and no high-tech dietary studies or supplements are required.

In fact, there's a huge number of major athletes who are strict vegans:

Mirco Bergamasco Rugby player Italy
Brendan Brazier Ironman triathlete Canada
Luke Cummo MMA Fighter United States
Mac Danzig MMA Fighter United States
Steph Davis Rock climber United States
Amy Dumas Wrestler United States
Jon Fitch MMA Fighter United States
David Haye Boxer United Kingdom
Eric Johnson NFL football player United States
Scott Jurek ultramarathoner United States
Jim Morris Bodybuilder United States
Pat Neshek Baseball player United States
Jake Shields MMA Fighter United States
Christine Vardaros Professional cyclist United States
Alexey Voyevoda Bobsledder Russia
Griff Whalen NFL football player United States
James Wilks MMA Fighter United States
Ricky Williams NFL football player United States
Mike Zigomanis Ice hockey player Canada

And last but not least:
Carl Lews Track and field athlete, who won 10 Olympic medals, nine gold, and 10 World Championships medals, eight gold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The fact that your comment got modded-up so highly, despite you clearly not doing one web search for "vegan athlete" to try and verify the veracity of your baseless world view, is a clear sign of how far /. has fallen into irrelevancy and worthlessness.

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=vega...

good deal

[The-Ixian]

Glad they are giving in to the pressure.

I think zoos, in general, are terrible places. I remember as a child going to the zoo and feeling really bad for the animals.

It's along the same lines as taking a tour of a prison to see the captives.

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:good deal

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with shutting down the zoos is that now you're going to raise an entire generation of children who have never seen a lion or giraffe or orca, etc. and so have never developed that primeval sense of wonder and excitement for nature's creatures. Decades down the road, those children will be adults, and they'll be voting on wildlife preservation laws, and they won't give a shit about nature preserves, or fishing bans, etc. What do they care? Its just a bunch of bugs and fish and crap, pave it over with something useful, like a strip mall.

So the animal rights activists may think they're winning the day, but really, they're just eating their seed corn. A generation or two later and we won't even have animal rights activists, let alone animals for them to activate over.

Re:good deal

[MightyMartian]

That may be true. But it is very hard to see how an animal of fairly sophisticated intelligence (if not some degree of outright sentience) whose ancestors going back millions of years have lived in the open sea, constrained only by the necessities of eating and breeding, can reasonably be put into what amounts to an oversized pool and somehow lead an existent that could in any way considered to be humane.

Honestly, I have a real problem even with elephant confinement, for much the same reason. These aren't macaws or some breed of Amazonian fish. These are very large brained animals that show at least some ability at advanced cognition, memory and emotional capability. Yes, they're not humans, and they do not likely possess anywhere near the mental capabilities of humans, but there are some types of animals who demonstrate their own cognitive abilities beyond that of much of the animal kingdom, and I think keeping them in captivity, at least in the sense of the rather small space that most of them have to exist in, is just plain wrong.

Re:good deal

[Solandri]

Your kids have also seen lots of books and videos about talking dogs, alien invaders, and self-aware toys. Seeing it live with your own eyes is what drives the point home that these things are real, while the stuff you see in books and on screens can be pretend. If anything, the same computer technology which enabled the Internet has also taught me to be even more skeptical of photo and video evidence. The stuff has gotten too easy to fake.

on the next episode of fawlty aquaria

[Pseudonymous Powers]

"Don't mention the documentary! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it!"

In Sea World's defense

[Virtucon]

Yeah, they're in the entertainment business but they did at one time do quite a bit of biological research on sea life, Orca included. With the stories that have come out and the trainer getting killed I would have thought they'd shutdown the program before now.

I remember growing up on SoCal and we had Marineland where they kept their Orcas in a very small tank that was about 4 stories high and had glass around it. so you could see them in the tank. I always remember going there and seeing how for lack of a better term, depressed they were. One of the Orca crashed through the tank glass and died and that was the end of Marineland from what I remember.

"a growing number of people"

[Nutria]

Wikipedia has done a great job in training me to spot weasels.

"we need to respond to the attitudinal change"

IOW, you're not responding to what's right or wrong, but what some ambiguous growing number of people think you should do? This is symptomatic of the disease that has also lead to Trump's popularity in a section of the populace.

perils of being a charismatic animal

[sittingnut]

curious thing, this selective sympathy of humans for some animals, and total indifference to fate of others.

must be a wonderful feeling to protest against alleged 'improper' treatment of orcas, while munching on a battery cage eggs. or condemn japanese whaling while supporting activities that end up eliminating nasty looking insects and reptiles.

  (of course there are a small percentage of humans who prefer to be consistent on treatment of animals, on one side or other side. but being rational is perhaps not quite human, or as they say 'humane' )

Misread title

[SuperKendall]

I read that at first as "gives up Orc breeding program" and was thinking, we just dodged a bullet there!

Problem with the tanks

[SuperKendall]

One of the Orca crashed through the tank glass

The problem is, that in the tanks they circulate the water.

It only makes sense the animals would end up going...

Stir Crazy.

Re:How is this "news for nerds?"

[whipslash]

....Stuff that matters.

Re:in other news, 30 divers seriously injured

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you go blackfish, you never go backfish.

Re:How is this "news for nerds?"

[wbr1]

Because some nerds care about or are interested in things like marine research, animal rights/treatment etc. Don't like, click next, or better vote submissions you want up. But, bitching is easier....

First , they imprison them

[PPH]

And now they suspend conjugal visits. There's going to be a riot.

Re:How is this "news for nerds?"

[thegarbz]

I do really like that the new owners are now chiming in against this anti news bitching. I for one find the story interesting. But two people arguing on the internet is just not the same as the owner coming out and setting the bar.

Kudos for being an active member of the site you run!