SeaWorld vs. Blackfish

In all fairness to Seaworld, who seems to be digging itself a hole - one, because it had no comment during the making of the documentary, and two, its Johnny come lately, overblown defensive explanation on the Seaworld website. First of all, I thought this was a very good movie - very well written and choreographed - powerful message; I am very sorry for Dawn, and the other trainer who was killed by Tilikum - can't say I feel so sorry for Daniel Dukes - he made the decision to jump into Tilikum's pool, though it is very sad that he lost his life. I was born and raised on the Illinois-Indiana border, where I lived throughout the 1960's and 70's. The Indianapolis 500 was a little more than an hour from my house, and there were people living in my small town of Danville, IL, who were there mainly for this annual event. However, a lot of race fans will tell you, without apology that they go to these races hoping to see accidents with the drivers getting hurt, and in some cases killed. This was very hard for me to accept at the time, as I was not even a teenager, but this is what some people want to see, and there is a very real risk to Indy 500 racing, just as there is to training and working with Killer Whales, and believe it or not, some people visit Shamu Stadium with the hope --- I know, shameful --- but true. With these peoples' deaths, it just reiterates how dangerous working with Killer Whales can be. But I believe Seaworld does everything it can to keep the trainers and whales as safe as possible, and by doing so, provide a very high quality form of family entertainment that also educates its audience. I visited the Orlando Seaworld with my family in 2009 and felt goose bumps when Tilikum came out of the pool, and onto the deck. I was in the Army at the time, and felt very proud to be an American, let alone an American Service Member, and I became so intrigued that I began reading and researching these wonderful animals. Not that I had given it much thought, but my knowledge of killer whales was that they were no better than sharks and would try and kill anything it got close to in the wild. I thought they were dangerous animals – there was a 1977 movie, “Orca”, that depicted a mad killer whale trying to kill a guy as an act of vengeance - It was kinda like “Grizzly” and “Jaws”, but the message was, Orcas are blood thirsty killers. This thought would probably still remain true, and I believe, if it weren’t for Seaworld, many people, floating around the oceans in their boats would be popping these whales with high powered rifles, harpoons, or anything else just to kill them, and begs the question, “By raising the awareness of these beautiful animals, how many wild killer whales has Seaworld saved?” My guess is thousands, as I, along with millions of other people, now know these Orcas are really oversized dolphins, are highly intelligent, and are very people friendly.

"...when you take intelligent, sentient creatures out of the wild and force them to do stupid tricks for our amusement – it says more about our intelligence than it does about theirs." Louie Psihoyos