A Whale of a Tale
Many families tend to try to find a getaway that is fun for both parents and the children. Many popular destinations tend to be amusement parks which seem to hold a good time for the whole family. Families travel far and wide to visit the famous SeaWorld; it is the perfect park, it has animals, rides, and shows for entertainment. Seaworld is a large chain of marine mammal parks that have been growing in popularity ever since the company began in 1964. Parks are built all across the country including San Diego, Orlando, and Ohio making it easier for families to make these parks a part of their vacation. However, there are hidden atrocities that are just being revealed to the public that this large corporation is foolishly denying. They have been confining their killer whales in small tanks with not enough room to swim with incompatible partners, taking whales out of their natural wild environment and away from their pods, and a lot of them come to suffer premature death because of their living conditions and other factors. While SeaWorld may come off as a fun, safe, and thrilling place to spend a vacation with one’s family, this distorted view that this large chain portrays to the public is misleading. It causes the American people to spend money to cause animals pain and suffering instead of a healthy living style and an enjoyable experience for themselves and the animals. Many families that visit the park may come out of the experience thinking that the whales are going back into their large captivity to spend the night. They are wrong. These whales, at their oldest ages, 80 for males and 60 for females, can be up to thirty two feet long. However, they only live to be about half of that age resulting in a length of around twenty two feet. They are crammed back into a small, usually twenty by thirty foot tank where they turn in circles until their next show. Lisa Lange, the vice president of PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) made the statement on the subject of these confinement situations that, “Confining sophisticated orcas to tiny tanks is like keeping someone in a bathtub for life. In the wild, orcas swim as far as 100 miles a day. But at SeaWorld, captive orcas--many of whom were taken from their ocean homes and family pods--continually turn in circles in small barren concrete tanks and live far short of their 40-year life expectancy” (PETA's Pod of Ornery 'Orcas' to Take Over Old Pasadena With a Whale of a Message: Get SeaWorld Float Out of the Rose Parade!). Like Lange says, imagine being confined to a bath tub for the rest of your life instead of being able to roam the comfort of your home with the people you love. Killer whales are highly intelligent animals that are used to swimming hundreds miles in open water each day. However, when they get this right taken from them they are then taken into tiny cement pools where they are left for their shortened period of life until they die. Changing their environment by taking them out of their natural habitat and placing them into this inhumane confinement is completely unacceptable. When these beautiful creatures are put into these tiny confinements, there are also other whales that they are forced to share living space with. Some may be male and some may be female, some may not be compatible together causing them to lash out at one another leaving sometimes irreparable damage. Many incidents have gotten the attention of PETA members such as the incident of Nakai, a whale in the San Diego SeaWorld PETA members said, “Action comes in the wake of a serious and needless injury to the orca Nakai, who lost a dinner plate-sized chunk of his lower mandible down to the bone. According to a whistleblower, Nakai was attacked by other frustrated, captive orcas, even though the federal Animal Welfare Act prohibits housing incompatible orcas together” (New Whale Injury Prompts PETA SeaWorld Protest). Placing orcas together, especially when