What you should consider before buying a ticket to SeaWorld

People everywhere are realizing that Marine Mammals on display for entertainment is abusive to the animal.

• Whales and dolphins are highly social, wide ranging animals found all over the world. In captivity, they’re confined to relatively tiny concrete pools, without the company of their families.  Instead of swimming, playing, hunting and exploring, they swim in small circles or float lifeless for hours in what amounts to solitary confinement.

• Captivity has been shown by experts to cause a variety of ailments that are simply not found in wild marie mammals.  Captivity frustration leads to physical displacement (ramming), biting on steel gates (“jaw popping”), and bites (raking).  Aggressive acts can be avoided in the wild because the animal can simply leave the area.  In captivity, the animal cannot escape an aggressor.

• Marine Mammals in captivity have short life spans.  In fact, captive killer whales live on average less than a third of the expected life span of their families in the wild.   Ninety one percent of all the captive Orca SeaWorld have held in their collections are now deceased.  Along with poor quality of life, they live on average only 4.5 years.  Only a handful of Orca in captivity has lived past their teens.

• Four people have been killed by captive killer whales, yet a human has never been harmed by one in the wild.  Hundreds, if not thousands of other incidents of aggression against humans by captive Orca have occurred, including some that resulted in lifetime disability. Mammals kept alone, performing tricks for their food, with no meaningful social interaction within their species and in many cases in pain lash out at human trainers.

Common sense says that these amazing, exhilarating, giant creatures should be left where they belong; in the ocean.  It is literally abusive to the animal to exist in these conditions, and a ticket to see them fuels an 11billion dollar a year industry.  Every visitor that walks through the gate is complicit to the well being of the animals that they are viewing. Trapped behind the glass, separated from family, medicated and listless, in suffering and surviving only to do tricks.

What you should consider before buying a ticket to SeaWorld

It’s about the MONEY, not the animals, and not you.

SeaWorld recently released their earnings report and business plan to investors. In it we find that because of declining admissions, they intend to focus on raising prices. SeaWorld management clearly stated that their plan for revenue was to raise ‘per capita’ spending. Offering a ‘Dine all Day’ plan, a ‘cashless bracelet’, expanding food court and retail outlets all designed to get every penny from every park guest.

Despite earning of billions per year, SeaWorld doesn’t pay taxes! Instead, they spend 11 million dollars a year on lobbyists in Washington DC to keep politicians from enforcing current laws regarding protected species, and to insure that they can continue in the exhibition business.

SeaWorld collects Donations! Acting as an animal welfare conservancy, SeaWorld collects donations despite their profitability. They have cooperated in helping other organizations rehab and release small ocean species, but have never released an Orca to the wild. The 9 million dollars that they spend annually does not come from ticket sales, and only represents .0006 of income.

SeaWorld is losing money regularly. Despite not paying taxes, raising prices, collecting charitable donations, they lost almost 50 million dollars in the 1st Quarter of 2013.

It is clear that buying a ticket to SeaWorld is funding a bad business. A business designed to milk money from the unsuspecting public, and put it into the pockets of big business. A family of 4 can expect to spend several hundred dollars for a day at the park, while the animals suffer and the corporation counts the money.