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Thursday, October 24, 2013

Guest Editorial: Blackfish - The Tale Untold, by Carson Jones (Animal Trainer)


Blackfish has made me upset. But not how you might think. I am sure many people are leaving theatres across the globe on a crusade to free killer whales of captivity, and with a new-found belief that Sea World is the corporate equivalent to Satan. I am upset, because the film isn’t true.

It is a highly polarizing and dramatized opinion. It is just that, nothing more than an opinion. I’m upset because as an animal trainer the film criminalizes my behavior, my co-workers' behavior, and the decisions of animal trainers across the country. I don’t work for Sea World. I don’t train killer whales. But this film has attempted to enrage and enflame the public concerning animals and captivity.
For those unaware of this production, the film presents the life story of Tillikum, an orca at Sea World Orlando. It starts with his capture in the 80’s and ends with the tragic death of trainer Dawn Brancheau in 2010. The film presents an enraged animal in a “psychosis” developed because of captivity. It criticizes the decisions made concerning this animal and presents Sea World as a corporate entity intent upon the continued exploitation of these amazing creatures. But the film only presents half the facts and attempts to use dramatic music and video clips to make generalizations about the care of these animals in captivity that are far from true.

The film uses footage of killer whales being taken from the wild 40 years ago to strengthen their case against the captivity of these animals and to criminalize Sea World in particular. But the problem is that the Sea World of 1980 is not the Sea World of today. The Sea World of 2000 is not the Sea World of today. Frankly, the Sea World of a week ago isn’t the Sea World of today. The facts are that the animal care and training industry is a constantly evolving thing. Facilities across the globe like Sea World are putting time, money, and energy into the continued exploration of these animals and how we as humans can best take care of them in captivity. Standards and practices are constantly evolving and changing based off of what we known and are learning about the animals as a species and the specific personalities and behaviors of the animals we work with on a daily basis.

Furthermore, the film attempts to blame Sea World for the death of Dawn Brancheau and the death and injury of others in the field. But in reality, no one is to blame. Working with large wild animals is an unpredictable business and every trainer knows that. Every single trainer understands the inherit risks involved in working with animals like this. Furthermore, every trainer understands the unique risks of working with animals in a free contact situation. But we still do it. Are we crazy? Maybe a little, but we also develop bonds and relationships with our animals that are like nothing else in the entire world.

Blackfish says that Tillikum is in a psychosis. That he is emotionally destroyed because of captivity. But if you watch the footage of that animal during a training session, you will realize that those claims are not at all true. The video footage of that animal shows an excited, intelligent animal that wants to work for his trainer. He is 12,000 pounds. If he doesn’t want to do the behavior, he’s not going to do it. You can tell by the training footage included in the film itself that Tillikum is fully engaged, motivated, and by all mean “happy” during training sessions. This is a far-off picture from the one that Blackfish attempts to create.

I sat in the theatre for ten minutes after the credits stopped rolling and cried. I was that upset by the twisted image the film had portrayed. The film attempted to question the very nature of animals in captivity. It tried to shake my beliefs… and it failed. Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite can use all of the dramatics she would like to shock her audience into believing that training these animals in captivity is wrong and that these animals serve no purpose in place’s like Sea World other than to make money entertaining. But she is far from the truth.

Sea World is a business that is true. They do have to make money. But they also invest millions in research, conservation, and education. I have been to camp at Busch Gardens Tampa Bay (another Sea World Parks and Entertainment attraction), and their animals get the best of everything. They are in a unique situation compared to much of the animal care industry in that they are for-profit and have lots of money to spend on their animals. They spare no expense when it comes to food, veterinary care, enrichment, and training. If their animals need something, they get it. Those animals are lucky to reside at the facilities they do because many other animals don’t have it quiet so perfect.

That does not mean that Sea World hasn’t made mistakes. Everyone takes the information that they have and attempts to formulate the best decision for their animals, their staff, and their facility. Sometimes it isn’t the easy decision, the fun the decision, or the decision that we emotionally believe is right. It is the best decision that we can make with the information that we have at the time. There isn’t perfect animal care anywhere in the world, but we are working towards that goal. The animal care industry has changed so much in the last fifty years and it would be a shame to let it all go to waste now.

These animals are not in captivity for the simple purpose of the money they bring in. They are ambassadors for their wild counterparts. They are there to educate, motivate, and inspire people to care for the environment around them. Without facilities like Sea World, there would be millions of people that would have never been able to make a connection with an orca. They would have missed the chance to experience the awe and the power of these amazing creatures. They would have never been given a reason to care about animals like these in the wild. Sea World is there to make people care. They are there is impact people in a way that pictures and videos cannot.

I cried in that theatre because there are going to be children across this country that don’t get to go to places like Sea World because their parents have seen the film Blackfish. They are never going to make that connection with the animals and they are never going to care. That thought destroys me.
We are facing an era where words have to become actions. We have to stop idealizing about saving animals on this planet and actually go out and do it. Sea World is doing it. Animal trainers, like myself, are doing it. But people have to care. People have to decide that it is unacceptable that 96 elephants are killed in Africa everyday. They have to decide that it is unacceptable that Orangutans are literally burned alive during intentionally set forest fires due to the increasing global demand for Palm Oil which goes into our cookies and cakes. People have to decide that these animals are worth saving. Orcas are not endangered at this time, but without our help at some point they will be.

Don't go see this film, but if you do then understand that there is so much more to the picture than what is presented. I urge you to continue to support Sea World, their trainers and more importantly their animals. I urge you to decide to care. I urge you to help us save the animals of this planet and I fervently believe that Dawn Brancheau would have told you to do the same. I didn’t know her, and I don’t pretend to have. But by all accounts she was a damn good trainer and a damn good person. As a fellow animal trainer, she feels almost like family. Although this tragic incident occurred more than three and half years ago, as a community we mourn her loss everyday and fight on to save the animals and the planet we all love so much.


26 comments:

  1. I am/was an animal trainer, conservationist, educator and while SeaWorld does a lot of great things, there are actions (recent ones, at that) that I cannot ignore. What about the fight over the belugas?? There was no real good way to look at that....

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  2. I was a dolphin trainer. These animals do not "want to work for their trainers." They want to work for food because doing their behaviors is the only way that they get food. They are NOT NORMAL ANIMALS. I will use the dolphins I worked with as an example. They do not act like normal dolphins. They become obsessed with food and bored with the toys that they are provided with. They also fight during shows and get frustrated and act out. I am sorry but any trainer has to understand that these animals are not performing because they "like" their trainers. They are performing because they have no other choice. If our dolphins did not perform correctly, they did not get their fish. Unlike dog training, where treats are used, the dolphins' entire diet is used. I love how this trainer refers to Tilikum as "happy." Yes, he looks so happy being the giant that he is in such a small pool. It's very sad. And if you think that if people do not visit SeaWorld, then they won't care you are wrong. The money spent on eco tours is increasing every year. They can go see them in the wild. In fact, I have found that places like SeaWorld are destroying people's minds when it comes to wild animals. I can't tell you how many times I have been on a dolphin watching cruise and have heard adults say that it is boring because they do not perform "tricks" like they do in the animal parks. Shame on us for not appreciating animals in their natural state and shame on us for trying to control them. These animals are not ambassadors. Ambassadors choose to be what they are. These animals were not given a choice. All they can do is swim in circles and wait for their next meal, or should I say their next performance, every day.

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    1. To the dolphin trainer above... are you suggesting that if an animal were to not perform its behaviors, that they would not feed it at all and let it starve to death? You're horribly ignorant. Is that how your facility trained their dolphins? If 'your' dolphins became obsessed with food, bored with toys, and fought with eachother during shows, the trainers and the training program are to blame. IE: You are to blame. Just as I would blame a child's parents for the child's obsession with food and subsequent obesity, lack of social skills, and general bad behavior, I would blame you and your facility for terrible practices that promote dependency and poor social behavior. Your dolphins are not normal animals.. they are "bad" dolphins and they were made that way by you. SeaWorld's dolphins are not normal animals... they are exceptional animals and they are made that way by SeaWorld's trainers and staff.

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    2. Being a trainer myself I am going to assume that either A) you never really were a dolphin trainer. or B) You are in your 70s, trained dolphins around 45-60 years ago and you still cling on to the belief that dolphin training then and dolphin training now is done in the same way...

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    3. I was a dolphin trainer too, and we did not manage the training that way. Each animal got a daily amount of food, whether it worked or not. If they did not work that day, the food got dumped to them. The big 'punisher': no trainer interaction.

      If your dolphins did not work for joy of learning and playing together, I am sorry to hear it. My dolphins LOVED working together, and we made a lot of people laugh and exclaim in awe.

      The US Navy has marine mammals and no longer tries to retire them to the wild because the animals insist on coming home to work!

      In short, it is not that I am saying you did not have your experiences, but I am saying your experiences sound abnormal in my experience.
      I wonder why you settled for this level of interaction with your animals. And, I am tired of people that used to train dolphins painting a terrible picture and trying to destroy the industry. I trained and I am very proud of my work and what I accomplished with my animal partners - for my bosses, for the public, for the conservation of marine mammals and for my animals. No apologies. Let's keep going forward and let's do it better and better. Many, many benefit - most of all, the conservation of the dolphins and other wild animals.

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    4. Kayce, you arguments reflect that of every other indoctrinated SeWorld employee. Can you please explain to me how what you do/did directly benefits the conservation of Dolphins in the wild?
      There is one point that SeaWorld people say that I do agree on, that many people need to have that ¨magical moment interaction¨ to start caring about animals. However, I would agree with this if it was still 1960! Today we have amazing LED technology TV with amazingly produced series like BBC Planet Earth which has awoken millions of people to the wonders of nature, and not once has it had to profit from any sort of animal to achieve this.
      If you have to profit from Dolphins and ¨use¨ the to entertain people in order for them to ¨learn¨ about nature, is it not time we re-evaluated our business models and concepts?
      Another point SeaWold people love to push its ¨the deep dark scary polluted ocean¨. You say its better to have them in Captivity so they don´t die of toxic pollutants in the Ocean. I this was so, then should we not be making an effort to Capture ALL cetaceans and lock them up in pools for safe being? This argument has absolutely no substance as we all know we are entering a dark phase of the planet with more problems than we are going to be able to resolve with our current way of thinking. Arguing that the Ocean is dangerous for Dolphins is like saying people should be locked in their homes as if they leave they will be breathing polluted air, eating hormone injected meat and have the probability of being run over at a cross road.
      The last point constantly used is how Dolphin trainers are ¨educating their public. How can it be education when what the public are seeing is an artificially created behaviour in an mammal that would never otherwise carry out any of those behaviours in the wild. The captivity of a Dolphin conditions him/her to start acting in ways that are not natural to his/her behaviour. Not only that, you are altering their psychological structure as being emotionally sophisticated mammals, they rely on their social structures for learning, behaviour, interaction, mating and many other things that are denied their natural process in captivity.
      Nevertheless it all boils down to ethics. The way the world is going we can either all sit back and watch it go down by doing business as usual, or we can finally wake up and collectively contribute to the improvement of of behaviours to one another and all the creatures that surround us. I always find it ironic that Homo Sapiens means Wise Humans in latin. We have a long way to go before we can pronounce ourselves as wise, as Wisdom requires knowledge, understanding and compassion in all our decisions and actions. And a wise choice would be to protect protect nature and attempt o leave it in tact as much as possible and interfere as little as possible.

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  3. With this movie, you have to follow the money trail. CNN Films shot and produced this film, with an obvious liberal bent to appease their eco-terrorist executives and financiers. That is old news though. But it gets more interesting after that. The distributor for Blackfish is Magnolia Pictures. Magnolia Pictures is a division of 2929 Entertainment. And 2929 Entertainment is co-founded by none other than...drumroll please...Mark Cuban.

    Mark Cuban? What does he have to do with anything? Well, he has a vested interest in a multitude of things, but the part I'd like to focus on is his media holdings, specifically his relationships with ABC and CNN. First, the most obvious one is his role as an investor in the show "Shark Tank". He was also on "Dancing With The Stars", another ABC program. So, we know he has a pretty significant interest in that particular network, and he is looking to shop his AXS TV network (formerly HDNet) to a new owner, which he's already taken steps to do last year by bringing in Ryan Seacrest, Anschultz Entertainment Group, and Creative Arts Agency to share the financial load with him, since advertising profits on smaller cable networks have stagnated due to the downturn in the economy. Two logical inferences here are, first, that he's hoping ABC will pick it up for him and add it to their collection of cable networks, and secondly, that he can divest his interest in it and profit from it. He probably would have done so already, but he's been under the microscope lately from the feds, specifically the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), who brought him to court over an insider trading scandal involving his Mamma.com stock holdings. Unfortunately, the evidence wasn't hard enough to pin him down, and he was acquitted. I will come back to ABC's stake in a moment.

    Also, he has interests in CNN from two areas: a partnership with CNN helped get HDNet off the ground with secondary footage from CNN reporters during the U.S.-led War in Afghanistan being among the first live programming on the network, and also through his ownership of Landmark Theaters (another division of 2929 Entertainment), a chain of mostly smaller theaters that run art films/documentaries, the perfect type of venue that would play the type of programming that CNN Films produces. Again, yet another way that he makes money off of Blackfish.

    So, back to the ABC part...what do they have to gain from this? ABC is owned by the Walt Disney Company, and is a direct competitor of SeaWorld in Orlando and California. Those tourist dollars are pretty hard to come by without spending a ton of money on continuous upgrades to your parks even when things are good, but with an economy in a recession it's even more tenuous. So, what's a good way to gain a bigger market share of tourists with minimal effort? Try to build a public relations nightmare for the competition (SeaWorld) to get rid of their main attraction (Shamu), or at the very least, change public opinion against the captivity of orcas, driving more people to the Disney parks.

    So there you have it. I can guarantee that none of this will be in the behind-the-scenes features of the Blackfish DVD or Blu-Ray, but it exists nonetheless.

    Cheers!

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    1. "Blackfish" was not "shot and produced by CNN." It is an independent film that was produced by Manny Oteyza. It was shown at Sundance Film Festival and was later bought by CNN films and Magnolia Pictures for wider release. These two companies were not involved in the film's production or creation.

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  5. It is great that your OPINION is that the film isn't true...the film maker may have had a slant to her documentary, but to even think that for one second that Sea World does not have their own slant is absurd. As an EDUCATOR and BIOLOGIST that has spent most of my career studying ecology and evolutionary biology, there are many inherent problems with the continuation of cetacean captivity. Primarily the manner in which captive orcas are bred could not be more unnatural. To say nothing of the tanks that they are held in and the tasks that they MUST perform to get fed, the breeding experiments done by Sea World and others create offspring with unique genetic quirks that would likely explain many of the stillbirths and unnatural calf mortality in those settings. WIld orcas surely experience these problems but not to due to what essentially amounts to hybridization between groups that have in some cases been separated socially, physically and nutritionally for countless generations. Genetic evidence in orcas that cohabitate a region, such as the Pacific Northwest, shows that some orca pods have not interbred in 10,000 years, essentially the makings of speciation. The reckless nature of the breeding program also condones having CALVES as young as 6 participate, this would not ever happen in any wild orca population... Which brings us to the Sea World company line about orca lifespan... As an educator, this is personally offensive. To promote the spreading of misinformation to your visitors is abhorrent. A healthy wild orca can live to be 60 for a male and 90-100+ for a female. Whereas in the documentary, the Sea World educator is clearly telling people 25-35 years... I know another argument that is floating around is that these animals inspire people and that is why they need to be on display. Yet, I happen to love great white sharks, as many others do, I have never seen one, nor will I probably ever, that does not diminish my love and respect for that animal nor my desire for its conservation. This is a desperate argument that really holds no ground, particularly in the youtube age. Finally, as to conservation, another poster mentioned the beluga whales, I'm presuming those are the ones which NOAA are legitimately barring from import, which were to be distributed among a few different facilities. The line from the Georgia Aquarium was essentially that they need to take them to save them...diminishing wild stocks of an animal that is isolated reproductively from all other belugas will only accelerate their demise in the Sea of Okhotsk. To say that Sea World has evolved may be true, yet they still fought tooth and nail with OSHA and are still fighting with the MFS and NOAA to resist any changes to their bottom line. Dawn's arm was EATEN! Sea world totally ignores that fact and propagates the drowning myth, to this day they are still fighting against change and acknowledgement. Some animals thrive in captivity, they have enhanced lifespans, they have no food insecurity, in most cases, due to dedicated trainers they have very enriching lives. This is not a diatribe against trainers in any way, but some animals cannot and more importantly should not be trained... Cetaceans, along with great apes, big cats and even elephants are just animals that are too socially complex in the wild and have far too much influence in their own environments to be kept for our amusement, or worse, profits.

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    1. As an educator, you should predicate your arguments on facts rather than absurdities, such as that performing behaviors is the only way the animals get fed. Get real. And yet you talk about being personally offended over the spreading of disinformation?

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    2. Um. Excuse me. Where are you getting your information? What do you mean Calves as young as 6 participate in breeding programs? They are physiologically unable to since they aren't sexually mature at that age.

      Also I don't know of any respected facilities that require an animal to perform to get fed. Animals get fed their entire diet throughout the day regardless of whether or not they decided to perform.

      Dawn's arm wasn't "eaten".

      And what makes you think some animals should not be trained? You do realize that training is enriching to all animals if done correctly?

      And of course they are fighting against MFS and NOAA. The author of this article clearly states that he recognizes that Sea World is a business. They make money but they also use that money towards conservation...are you reading with your fingers? Or do you just like to make worthless points?

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    3. Kalina, a killer whale born at SeaWorld Orlando, was pregnant with her first calf at the age of 6 (Keet, currently of SeaWorld California). A number of other female have also become pregnant at around the same age.

      If an animal decides it wants food right now, in the wild it can forage and find some. In captivity, if an animal wants food right now it must do as it is told (EXACTLY as it is told) or have to wait until a regimented feeding time that the trainers decide on. I.E., It is not being said that if an animal refused to obey they will die of starvation, the point is that if they want the food on offer, they MUST perform.

      Dawn's arm, according to the official autopsy report, eyewitness accounts, interviews and attack footage, WAS swallowed and eaten by Tilikum.

      The point that 'animals should not be trained' comes hand-in-hand with the fact that they should not be in captivity in the first place - must a wild orca be trained? No.

      SeaWorld uses a percentage of its profit to help conserve nature and so on, yes, but this is profit they could be making through their on site restaurants, theme park rides, water sports shows, sky tour rides, and so on, not through the exploitation of animals. A select few animals should not have to suffer as 'ambassadors' so that other more fortunate animals can continue to thrive.

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  7. Dear Author, I forever love you. This is 100% exactly, to a tee , how I feel about this movie. Thank you so much for what you do with animals and for telling people the truth about Blackfish . What are these other commenters saying? Only fed during shows......my mind has been blown at the ignorance of not just that, but all almost all "anti-cap" comments. They put human reasoning and emotion in their descriptions of how whales think and feel.. anyways, thanks again!

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  8. Animals belong in the wild, period. They are exploited for human entertainment, and it is pure vanity on your part to think that a human bond with a whale is what makes them want to "perform". Seaworld whales are by no means lucky. Lucky are those that get to live in the ocean. Get over yourself. You're no hero.

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  9. Ignorance is bliss...I guess you believe what you have to, in order to sleep at night.

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  10. Opinion? I'm sorry, but the world's leading and most respected marine biologists, scientists, and conservationists would disagree with you. This is not opinion. What is presented in Blackfish is factual information.
    You say that the film is not accurate but you do not give an example of an inaccuracy presented in the film. If the film isn't true, as you say, then there should be plenty of examples to give, I'm sure! So why have you neglected this in your article?
    Orcas in captivity are so stressed that they chew on the sides of their swimming pools and the gates between the pools until they break their teeth off. This is a fact. Does that sound like a "happy" animal? Orcas in captivity display stereotypical behavior like head banging, tongue wagging, lethargy, logging, etc. This is a sign of a mentally unhealthy animal. This is a fact. Does that sound like a "happy" animal? Orcas in captivity are subject to an unstable social structure and are repeatedly raked and exposed to aggressive situations. This is a fact. Does that sound like a "happy" animal? Orcas in captivity are artificially inseminated too young and too often. Because of this they often suffer stress and sometimes illness. This is a fact. Does that sound like a "happy" animal? Orcas in captivity are subject to separations from closely bonded family members. Because of this they suffer massive grief and emotional trauma. This is fact. Does that sound like a "happy" animal? Orcas in captivity are chronically ill. Their diet is depleted of nutrients and they are often over-medicated. This is a fact. Does that sound like a "happy" animal? Orcas in captivity are three times more likely to die at any age in comparison to their wild counterparts. This is fact. Does that sound like a "happy" animal to you? You're not fooling anyone when you claim that the orcas in captivity are "happy."
    The SeaWorld and Busch Garden's conservation fund acts as a middle man. They collect money and then distribute it to organizations of their choosing. Most are questionable. They have managed to gather 10 million dollars in 10 years. As a comparison: the World Wildlife Fund rakes in over 200 million every single year. And guess what! The World Wildlife Fund doesn't hold any animals in captivity, go figure! If SeaWorld is so inspirational, then how come their conservation fund is ridiculously underfunded? How come the World Wildlife Fund can bring in 20 times the amount of donations in ONE year than SeaWorld does in TEN? Huh.
    Your claim that guests at SeaWorld are making lasting connections with the animals is a moot point. Most of the guests at SeaWorld are families on vacation: tourists. They go in, they buy some hotdogs, sit their asses on the bleachers and chant "SHAMU" waiting to be splashed. Then, they go home, share some pictures, and forget about it. If your claim that these tourists are being inspired is correct, why are our oceans in the worst condition they've ever been? With millions of inspired guests walking out of SeaWorld's doors every single day, why aren't we seeing some improvement? I mean, where are they?
    I have never seen an orca and I love these animals like anyone else. Just because you don't go to SeaWorld doesn't mean you can't care. Seriously, it's 2013, get with the times!

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  11. Another point: orcas don't have to be in swimming pools in order for SeaWorld to educate, conserve wildlife, and continue their rescue, rehabilitation and release program. So using this as an argument for captivity is entirely irrelevant. By bringing up this argument you're essentially saying: "SeaWorld needs to keep orcas in swimming pools doing flips for the paying public because without it they can't conserve wildlife, rescue, rehabilitate or release animals." We all know that's a pathetic and entirely irrelevant argument for captivity. It's simply ridiculous!

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  12. Keeping whales and dolphins in captivity inspires the public to care about them? All you have to do is look at Japan and Russia to see that this claim is absolutely false!

    The separation of the mom and baby whales, the attacks, the excessive AI, the captures, the lies SeaWorld has sold the public... It is not "opinion" that these things happen. These are facts.

    SeaWorld does not give millions of dollars to conservation. Donations and government grants do (please look at their annual fund report to see how much of SeaWorld's money actually goes to conservation.)

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  13. You can all argue as much as you all like but in the end its Semantics. How can you even argue over something that is inherently wrong. The fact is the ethical choice would be to not have any intelligent creatures in captivity and let them roam in their environment like they were born to do, not perform stupid tricks for food. Some will then argue, oh but then what will the Dolphin Trainers so if all the cetaceans were set free? They would not have a Job. Well, if any of you even cared about animals and the Environment, Dawn B included, you would have or would get a Job in conservation protecting natural habitats and species.
    Protecting the natural environment is a mammoth challenge as it is, do we really need too add the problems of keeping animals in captivity and investing resources in cement tanks when that money could be used for conservation.
    Replying to above. Seawold last year spent 1.5m on conservation... on 1.5bn sales. Wow... so generous, they do so much good!
    The whole thing is sacrilege.

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  14. Hearing from both sides gives a more balanced view of the issue.

    But what if there was also a third side to the issue? One from ‘outside’ the system as it were.

    Not many people remember, or even know, that in 1980, before all their training, Sea World had four young orcas, Kasatka, Kotar, Katina and Canuck II in their public access petting pool with the dolphins. There, for over a year, they interacted with thousands of visitors to the park hands on, with no trainer oversight and no one was ever hurt. They were gentle, friendly and inquisitive towards people who weren’t trying to tease them with fish trying to touch them.

    I was one of those people and this is Kotar. His unhappy captive life is a story unto itself.
    http://i19.photobucket.com/albums/b171/OrcinusOrca/LJ/MeKotar.jpg

    I spent many hundreds of hours at the wall of the tank patiently waiting and earning their trust. They even gently grabbed my arm in their mouth, in the same manner as official reports state how Dawn was grabbed by Tilikum, over a dozen times testing the trust I showed them. I am alive, whole and unharmed. I was under constant observation by the exhibit monitor and once they were consistently coming to me, I was also constantly observed from across the pool by staff from the Orca show, who were trying to figure out how I got them to come to me since I never tricked them over with fish as most other visitors at the exhibit did. Had I been doing anything improper or unsafe I would have been challenged and possibly ejected from the park. This never happened so apparently everything I was doing was safe as far as management was concerned. Nor am I the only person to have interacted with them this way during their time in the exhibit. Photos of my interactions with them are in my FB photo album as proof.

    I an not now, nor never have been a trainer or worked for a park such as Sea World. I have worked on three interspecies communications project including Dr. John Lilly's project JANUS and have spent several thousands of hours working closely with many Cetaceans including the four Orcas mentioned above which may have helped me get close to them so quickly and easily.

    Now over three decades later, after all the operant behavior training, food and social depravation they have been subjected two, the only two of the four who are still alive, Kasatka and Katina are considered problem animals by Sea World.

    If the Orcas are ‘such dangerous and unpredictable animals’ why where they placed in such an uncontrolled environment where the untrained public could interact with them? Logic would dictate that they are not inherently dangerous but that it is what they have been subjected to over the last three decades in captivity have done this to them. This is why these now highly trained Orcas are killing and injuring trainers who are ‘specially trained to work with Orcas’ when decades earlier untrained Orcas interacted with untrained humans and no one was hurt. EVER.

    Back then I wanted to be a trainer so I could work with the Orcas. But getting to personally know them the way I did, I learned what they were truly like and it changed my mind. Captivity is toxic to Cetaceans in its current state of making them perform ridiculous tricks for their daily food for human entertainment in overcrowded, undersized tanks.

    You speak of risk but apparently only to humans with no concern for the Cetaceans themselves. It is fact that over 85% of all captive Orcas, weather wild caught or captive born have died in captivity. What other captive animal has such a poor success rate in captivity? It needs to end. I have lost too many friends to those tanks.

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  15. Yay Carson! Keep speaking out and sharing your insider insights.

    Some people are pushing ideology and some people just don't have access to the rest of the story and you are having an impact for the latter.

    As we know, what we do with animals in captivity is IMPORTANT. Somebody pushing ideology is not grappling with the tough realities. Realities like: hellooo.... habitat is disappearing so fast, that if we do not have these animals in captivity, many are in danger of disappearing altogether. Extremists, read it and weep and maybe reach out and help those of us who are striving to build a world where people and animals thrive together in all kinds of wonderful and surprising ways.

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  16. Humans are horribly ignorant beings.Our ability to respect other species let alone our own is shockingly low given our relatively high capabilities of intelligence and sentience. Perhaps we think of ourselves too highly. We are at once cruel monsters and graceful saviors. A rather tragic mixture...

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  17. A third of the way through "Blackfish," I imagined myself as a child watching my family being murdered, then growing up in a prison where I had to do degrading tricks for cheering crowds who'd been assured that I adored the place. After a couple of months of that, I'd want to chew someone's leg off, too. 

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