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While I am horrofied and deeply saddened by the death of marine trainer Dawn Bracheau's death at Florida Seaworld, I don't blame Tilikum the Orca at all. Orcas are extremely intelligent, and their natural inclination is to travel miles and miles and miles each and every single day. Hunting, interacting, exploring. To keep them in what amounts to a giant fish tank is just not natural or right. It's WORSE than an acqurium; I have one and the amount of work I put into it to make it an enriching location for the fish was huge. How can ANYONE replicate the ocean in a tank? Even places like Melbourne Aquarium wouldn't come close. It's great for fish and rays etc, but not the hyper intelligent species. Tilikum was already 2 years old when he was captured near Iceland i.e he was not born to captivity and by that age dolphins (orcas are a part of the dolphin family, not whale like most people think) are VERY much aware and would have a hard time getting used to the loss of freedom. I'm not saying the breeding of whales and dolphins for shows is any better but atleast the animals are used to the conditions from an early age. Maybe he remembers. Or maybe he was just doing a natural behaviour for his species i.e grab the prey, play with the prey, bite the prey, eat the prey. In fact you can see that behaviour in a BILLION Nat Geo doco's, hell you can see it with any pet cat; give them a scrunched up piece of paper and you'll see basically what happened.
Do I think captive whales and dolphins should be freed? Yes. Yes I do. I think one of the sacred duties of any animal owner/handler is to replicate their natural living conditions as closely as possible as often as possible, with the obvious removal of dangerous factors like predators, disease, injuries, worming, that sort of thing. If you can't provide tht, don't own the animal or take it from it's natural habitat. It's complicated tho; you can't just let them go. They'll die. They need to be taught how to hunt again. They need a family/pod to join. They need to learn a fear of humans so we don't cross paths too closely. This takes a loooong time, which means money. And we all know how devoted we humans can be when it means costing us a fortune with no personal benefot *rolls eyes*. I don't think captive born even CAN be freed, I don't think they'd survive. It's like me dumping my dogs in the middle of the bush and thinking they'll survive. Yeah they might, but god they'd suffer greatly, and probably live for a couple of years on the verge of starvation before meeting a painful end.
The other factor is public awareness and education. Most people don't have the opportunity to go whale watching like I got to. The vast majority would never see dolphins or whales in real life, only on the screen. The screen can't bring across the sheer majesty and power of these incredible animals. Once you have seen them, (unless you are a filthy bastard Japanese whaler who deserves to die a horrible, nasty, painful death by being slowly skinned and disembolwed then have acid tipped on you repeatedly while being beaten with reeds with razor blades in them...er, sorry, I am VERY anti-whaling), you can't help but be touched. You could argue these orcas are helping raise awareness. And they def are. But that shouldn't be to the detriment of their health, mental and physical.
In a perfect world they'd be freed, and live out their lives happily. In a perfect world I'd be allowed to sink every whaling ship in the world and refuse to rescue their crews. Neither are going to happen. At least Orlando SeaWorld have already said Kilikum won't be destroyed. He's been involved in two other deaths in the past, neither wash is fault, one was a tragic accident, the other the guy probably deserved it, gene pool cleansing. This ladies death was preventable, but it's easy to say 'if only'. So what happens to Kilikum now? He won't be used in shows any more. He'll spend his days in a tank. A sterile, empty tank. Maybe if he's really lucky he'll be moved to one of those mid-way pens where he's in a cage in the sea. Either way, no one wins. You have to ask yourself, was it worth it?
Do I think captive whales and dolphins should be freed? Yes. Yes I do. I think one of the sacred duties of any animal owner/handler is to replicate their natural living conditions as closely as possible as often as possible, with the obvious removal of dangerous factors like predators, disease, injuries, worming, that sort of thing. If you can't provide tht, don't own the animal or take it from it's natural habitat. It's complicated tho; you can't just let them go. They'll die. They need to be taught how to hunt again. They need a family/pod to join. They need to learn a fear of humans so we don't cross paths too closely. This takes a loooong time, which means money. And we all know how devoted we humans can be when it means costing us a fortune with no personal benefot *rolls eyes*. I don't think captive born even CAN be freed, I don't think they'd survive. It's like me dumping my dogs in the middle of the bush and thinking they'll survive. Yeah they might, but god they'd suffer greatly, and probably live for a couple of years on the verge of starvation before meeting a painful end.
The other factor is public awareness and education. Most people don't have the opportunity to go whale watching like I got to. The vast majority would never see dolphins or whales in real life, only on the screen. The screen can't bring across the sheer majesty and power of these incredible animals. Once you have seen them, (unless you are a filthy bastard Japanese whaler who deserves to die a horrible, nasty, painful death by being slowly skinned and disembolwed then have acid tipped on you repeatedly while being beaten with reeds with razor blades in them...er, sorry, I am VERY anti-whaling), you can't help but be touched. You could argue these orcas are helping raise awareness. And they def are. But that shouldn't be to the detriment of their health, mental and physical.
In a perfect world they'd be freed, and live out their lives happily. In a perfect world I'd be allowed to sink every whaling ship in the world and refuse to rescue their crews. Neither are going to happen. At least Orlando SeaWorld have already said Kilikum won't be destroyed. He's been involved in two other deaths in the past, neither wash is fault, one was a tragic accident, the other the guy probably deserved it, gene pool cleansing. This ladies death was preventable, but it's easy to say 'if only'. So what happens to Kilikum now? He won't be used in shows any more. He'll spend his days in a tank. A sterile, empty tank. Maybe if he's really lucky he'll be moved to one of those mid-way pens where he's in a cage in the sea. Either way, no one wins. You have to ask yourself, was it worth it?
