The End of an Orca Era

When I was little, my parents took the family on a trip to Walt Disney World.  This was before Animal Kingdom opened, so I was only partially impressed on the whole Mickey Mouse deal (especially once I realized that the animals on the Jungle River Cruise were fake).  The part of that trip that I remember the most?  Our first day in Orlando, when we visited SeaWorld Florida.

It was there that I saw orcas for the first time in my life.  The second time I saw them was at SeaWorld California.

Unless I go whale watching in the Pacific Northwest (which I would very much like to do), I don't think I'll be seeing orcas again for a while.  I'm tentatively planning a trip to San Antonio, not only for their excellent zoo, which I've heard so much about but never seen, but also for the third and final SeaWorld.

The days of orcas in American marine parks are drawing to a close following the announcement of SeaWorld that it would end its orca breeding program.  It's probably not fair, however, to lay all the blame (or credit, depending on where you stand) on Blackfish.  The writing has probably been on the tank walls for a while.

Shortly after SeaWorld made it's decision, I heard a colleague scoff that people paid so much attention to the supposed hardships of the tiny handful of orcas in SeaWorld's care versus the plight of wild populations, some of which are in dire straits.  That's when it hit me.  SeaWorld has almost all of the orcas in the United States... which still isn't that many.  Many of these animals are related to one another.  Orcas breed slowly, and infant mortality has always been a problem.  The prospect of obtaining more from the wild is highly unlikely, largely due to the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which limits take on cetaceans and other marine mammals (contrary to popular opinion, SeaWorld does not take orcas from the wild these days and has nothing to do with the infamous dolphin drives in Japan).

The result?  If orcas were a managed Species Survival Plan under the auspices of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, population managers would already be starting to write them off.  Without some major changes, that population doesn't seem like it could go on for that much longer - a few more generations, perhaps, but even that I wonder about.

Even if the breeding ban is reversed, as some zookeepers hope new management will do, I don't know how much of a future there is for SeaWorld's orcas, which is (apologies to Miami Seaquarium), pretty much saying all the orcas in the USA.  Which means I better make that trip to San Antonio a little sooner than later.