Assignment 16 - lindsey angel

Keltie Byrne. Daniel Dukes. Dawn Brancheau. These are the victims of a famous SeaWorld orca named Tilikum; a fraction of the total victims of captive animals. However, it is not the instinctive nature of animals, like Tilikum, that makes them killers. It is the result of the physical and psychological abuse humans subject these innocent animals to.
Before we can possibly begin to understand the circumstances of Tilikum's attacks, we must look at how he came to be in captivity, performing to the delight of Americans. At only two years old he was rounded up by men, using explosives to scare his pod into scattering, and caught in a purse-seine net, and forever separated from his family. From there the trauma only continued. He was inhumanely stored in a pitch-black cement holding tank, with only enough space to swim in small circles and float aimlessly. After a long year, Tilikum was moved to Sealand of the Pacific where he was stored in a hundred by fifty by thirty-five foot tank with two other female orcas, Haida and Nookta. Keep in mind, that Tilikum would grow to be 22 and a half feet long, and that wild orcas swim hundreds of miles a day. While at Sealand, Tilikum was subject to physical harassment from his whale counterparts, due to frustration from a type of training used where a group of orcas was deprived of food if one of them did not perform correctly. This type of aggression is common in captive orcas, yet seldom found in the wild.
On February 21, 1991 Keltie Bryne fell into the small pool holding the three orcas, where Tilikum dragged her to the bottom of the pool, drowning her. After this incident, Sealand closed its doors, and Tilikum was purchased by Sea World for its breeding program. Today, 54 percent of Sea World's whales contain Tilikum's genes. There he was once again confined to a small tank, ten thousandths of the amount of water he would have swam in a single day in the wild. He was later held responsible for the deaths of Daniel Dukes on July 6, 1999; and Dawn Brancheau, his trainer, on February 24, 2010.
While you may assume that Tilikum was just a "bad" whale, unfortunately, these types of attacks have occurred throughout the history of orca captivity. In 2006, Tilikum's offspring, Kasatka dragged her trainer Ken Peters down to the bottom of her tank twice, nearly drowning him. On December 24, 2009 – exactly two months before Dawn Brancheau's death – a trainer named Alexis Martinez at Loro Parque (an establishment similar to Sea World) in the Canary Islands was killed by Keto, one of the park's orcas who had been bred and trained by Sea World.
Both Tilikum and Keto, as well as many other orcas are forced to experience the negative effects of captivity. Stress, anxiety – which can be seen in the habit of captive whales to gnaw on their pens and consequently break their teeth, boredom – captive whales can often be seen floating listlessly in their tanks, performing for hours, and physical abuse caused by other whales. One particularly brutal example of such abuse occurred at Sea World in California, when Kandu the fifth bled to death after an artery in her upper jaw was severed in a display of dominance with another whale. This type of abnormal behavior is not only found in captive orcas, but all animals across the board. Animals in zoos can often be seen rocking and pacing – which is a sign of stress, over-grooming, consuming feces, being physically harassed by other animals, gnawing on their cages in frustration, and in extreme cases self-mutilating. This can be seen in a study conducted by Nicholas Newton-Fisher, a primate behavioral ecologist at the University of Kent's School of Anthropology and Conservation, in which he observed 40 chimpanzees at six different zoos across the U.S. and the U.K. over two years. He then compared his own observations to those made of wild chimpanzees. All 40 chimpanzees displayed abnormal behavior, no matter the quality of the zoo, that was related stress, anxiety, and aggression. They would "poke at their own eyes and other body parts, bang themselves against surfaces, pull out their hair, pace, drink urine, and do other things not associated with wild chimpanzee populations" (Viegas, 2011).
Now I don’t know about you all, but growing up I always dreamed of having wild animals as pets. An elephant. A lion. A giraffe. A monkey. Even an orca, thanks to films like Free Willy. Knowing what I know now, however, I could never condone the purposeful capture of such extraordinary creatures. While, as a child, this idea may have fulfilled my wildest dreams, the capture and forced captivity of these animals would have broken them. It would have destroyed them both physically and mentally, turning my beloved pets into killers, and I would have been responsible, just like we are responsible for tragedies like Tilikum's if we continue to sit back and do nothing while countless animals across the globe are subject to this abuse. While, in the case of Tilikum, Sea World has agreed to stop using captured orcas, as well as end their orca breeding program we must extend that same right to all animals. We must end the capture of ALL wild animals, unless they are deemed unfit to survive on their own in the wild and/or are held on the basis of species preservation and protection. We must also prohibit the breeding of ALL captive animals (again unless it is for species preservation), as well as reform the treatment of current animals living in captivity both in the United States and on a global scale.