Popular social-networking site Pinterest is great for sharing fashion tips, cool pictures, and recipes—and for calling out a business that abuses animals. When we saw that SeaWorld had started a Pinterest page, we knew we could use it to orcas' advantage.

Wonder what colorful words SeaWorld execs uttered when they saw this:

Anyone who went to SeaWorld's Pinterest page saw animal advocates' calls to release orca Tilikum and the other prisoners to a marine sanctuary.

While our Pinterest protest was a little good clean fun at SeaWorld's expense, we hope the execs are starting to see that no amount of their online hype will keep SeaWorld's cruelty covered up.

Help free Tilly!

Whether you believe in karma or payback, in 2010 we saw that for every action there is a reaction. We've rounded up the top six "Payback Is Hell" stories of 2010. It's safe to say that animals are just as tired of cruelty to animals as we are.

1. A bull decided that he no longer wanted to be ridiculed and repeatedly stabbed with banderillas for people's entertainment, so he charged the matador and told him, "Up yours." ¡Olé!
2. A truck driver learned that chomping on fried pork rinds while driving can lead to a sudden impact and a near-death experience when he choked and crashed his truck into a ditch.
3. After shooting and butchering a pig, a man was accidentally shot when his dog stepped on the man's own rifle.
4. Seven people who were running intoxicated in the path of raging bulls were trampled and injured in Pamplona.
5. When a giraffe and an elephant revolted against their imprisonment in zoos, one zookeeper was attacked and another man died.
6. After being taken from his ocean home as a baby and enduring years of frustration from being confined in a tiny tank, an orca, Tilikum, struck back and killed a trainer at SeaWorld.

Written by Mirisa Roy

Caring folks continue to plead for basic compassion at SeaWorld and call on officials to enforce anti-cruelty laws. But Tilikum, the orca who has killed three people, is still confined to a cramped, claustrophobic tank that's barely bigger than the size of his body to prevent him from having any physical contact with the trainers—except when they masturbate him.

Rock and roll's bad boy and PETA friend, Tommy Lee, who's been known to raise a few eyebrows, was blown away to learn about SeaWorld's perverted treatment of Tilly—and expresses his disgust in this letter to officials:

It's perfect-Lee put, wouldn't you say? Please back Tommy up—and speak out for Tilly— by writing to SeaWorld too.  

Written by Karin Bennett

An investigation by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) into the "death by orca" of trainer Dawn Brancheau at SeaWorld Orlando has resulted in three citations against the marine park for safety violations, including willfully exposing employees to life-threatening hazards when interacting with orcas. OSHA assessed SeaWorld with the maximum penalty—a $75,000 fine.

According to OSHA regional administrator Cindy Coe, "SeaWorld recognized the inherent risk of allowing trainers to interact with potentially dangerous animals." She added, "Nonetheless, it required its employees to work within the pool walls, on ledges, and on shelves where they were subject to dangerous behavior by the animals."

The citations are all the more noteworthy considering the fact that SeaWorld tried to sway OSHA's findings and attempted to thwart the investigation at every turn, according to a former staffer, who also says that SeaWorld withheld documents from OSHA and refused to allow inspectors to talk with trainers. OSHA was also pressured by a Florida politician who was worried about losing those SeaWorld dollars that fill the state's coffers.

In the wake of the report, PETA is renewing our call for the release of all the orcas at SeaWorld to seaside rehabilitation pens.

"[T]he only thing that will prevent misery and death in the future is for SeaWorld to stop capturing and confining wild marine mammals and to let these orcas go," said PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. "The list of human beings—Keltie Byrne, Alex Martinez, Ken Peters, Steve Aibel, and Dawn Brancheau—who have been killed or maimed by captive killer whales, and the list of orca families torn apart by SeaWorld's greed, will only otherwise grow."

PETA is also calling on Florida Governor Charlie Crist to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate SeaWorld's actions. We hope you'll write to the governor, too—and whatever you do, never go within a country nautical mile of a SeaWorld park.

Written by Alisa Mullins

From plane flyovers to 18-hour tub-ins, people are saying "enough" to SeaWorld's exploitation of orcas, bottlenose dolphins, and other animals. And now, even if you live nowhere near Orlando, San Antonio, or San Diego—where SeaWorld forces marine mammals to spend their entire lives in tiny tanks—you can still make a difference for animals if you RSVP to our virtual protest on Facebook and participate in it on June 18.

SeaWorld, which owns most of the captive orcas and bottlenose dolphins in the U.S., has a hideous history of animal exploitation. Marine mammals suffer for years in tanks that are only a few times larger than their bodies. They are never able to swim freely, feel the ocean current, or enjoy life in a closely knit pod, and they die far short of the life span that they would enjoy if they lived in the ocean where they belong. And the park's death toll is staggering, counting not only orcas such as Taima, her mother, and her stillborn calf but also humans, including the trainer who was killed by Tilly the orca in February.

If you RSVP for the Facebook event now and update your Facebook status with a comment about SeaWorld on Friday, you and all the friends you can muster can show park officials that their deadly attraction belongs in the history books.

Spread the word to your friends and family: Never buy a ticket to SeaWorld.

Written by Jennifer O'Connor

Wild animals are dying because of human avarice, but unlike the plight of those who are perishing in oil, the carnage at SeaWorld can easily be stopped. An orca named Taima died this weekend while giving birth to a stillborn calf at SeaWorld Orlando. The baby was conceived by Tilikum, the angry and frustrated orca who battered a trainer to death earlier this year—the third time he has killed a human.

For Taima, death was terrifying and painful, but it was a release from a miserable life of deprivation. In nature, orcas choose their own mates, and the families stay together for life. Ripped from her ocean home, Taima's own mother, Gudrun, died in captivity after a complicated delivery in which chains were used to extract her stillborn calf. Gudrun was called mentally ill and was known to be violent. Both mother orcas and their calves met their end alone in a tank full of chemically-treated water that must have felt like a bathtub to these animals, who were meant to explore the endless fathoms of the sea.

SeaWorld is a greedy outfit that spends millions of dollars on cruel breeding programs and marketing promotions. It values profit over safety and treats orcas as if they were wind-up toys. Like BP, SeaWorld can never make up for the harm that it has done. It should immediately fund the creation of a coastal sanctuary into which the orcas can start their journey back home. It can start with Tilikum.

Please, contact Blackstone Group and insist that it stop the horrors associated with keeping animals in captivity and put its money toward more humane endeavors.

Written by Jennifer O'Connor

http://www.flickr.com/photos/
wendypiersall/ / CC BY 2.0

Two female orcas at SeaWorld Orlando are pregnant—one is expected to give birth later this month or in early June—but we're not celebrating.

If the calves survive, what do they have to look forward to? Swimming endless circles in barren concrete tanks, doing circus-type tricks, and dying an early death. Twenty-one orcas died in U.S. SeaWorld facilities between 1986 and 2008—an average of nearly one each year for 22 years. Their deaths were caused by severe trauma, intestinal gangrene, acute hemorrhagic pneumonia, pulmonary abscesses, chronic kidney disease, chronic cardiovascular failure, septicemia, and influenza. In some cases, the cause of death could not even be determined, but it is clear that none of these animals died of old age.

The father in both of the pregnancies is Tilikum, the same orca who attacked trainer Dawn Brancheau—ripping off her left arm and part of her scalp, crushing her ribs, and breaking bones throughout her body before drowning her. Despite knowing about the extreme danger posed by Tilikum—including the fact that he had killed humans twice before—SeaWorld refuses to "Free Tilly" most likely because he's a valuable and prodigious breeder. Tilikum has already sired 13 calves for SeaWorld.

Enough is enough. Please take a moment to write to the Blackstone Group—the company that owns SeaWorld—and ask that it send Tilly and the other animal inmates in its facilities to sanctuaries.

Written by Paula Moore

Forget the Alamo; There's something else for Texans to remember—the imprisonment of Tilly the orca:

Today, PETA's billboard went up near SeaWorld San Antonio to remind Texans not to mess with marine mammals. Our plea to free Tilly and other captive wild animals comes on the heels of last week's congressional hearing about marine abusement parks, to which PETA submitted testimony urging a ban on the confinement of orcas and other wild animals at SeaWorld and other profiteering prison-parks.

So what can you do? Remind everyone to steer clear of marine animal exhibits. And if you're looking for an animal-friendly place to visit this summer, I hear the Alamo is an interesting place to go.

Written by Amy Skylark Elizabeth

The Orange County Sheriff's Office has just released a 43-page investigative report into the death of Dawn Brancheau and is declaring her death an accident.

Dawn's death was no accident, and the Orange County Sheriff's report is entirely unsupportable on its face. Consider that a SeaWorld trainer who was acting as a "spotter" for Brancheau told investigators that Tilikum "has been deemed to have tendencies that make him unsafe," and yet Brancheau was allowed to "[lie] on her stomach, face to face with Tilikum … in three to four inches of water" at the side of the pool on a concrete slab, from which she was pulled into the water by the huge 12,000-pound orca.

The trainer also admitted that "no one ever goes in the pool with Tilikum because of his past history," yet video footage of Brancheau that was posted on the Web site of the NBC affiliate in Orlando and shot by a visitor to the park just minutes before her death clearly shows Brancheau in the water with Tilikum.

SeaWorld executives have long known that these animals pose a risk of death and injury, but they go for the money, exactly as mine owners who won’t risk a drop in profits by stopping to fix massive problems that put humans in harm's way do.

Another spotter confirmed that on the day of Brancheau’s death, Tilikum was "possessive," and the assistant curator of animal training admitted to investigators that "Tilikum's past history is that when he obtains a person, he does not let them go."

Despite knowing about the extreme danger posed by Tilikum and the fact that he had killed twice before, SeaWorld goes beyond ignoring the problem, understating the risks and paying money to trainers to risk their lives.

Continue reading.

Today, the House Subcommittee on Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife is holding a hearing to discuss the "educational value" of marine amusement parks and the recent death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau, who was dragged under water and battered to death by Tilly, a 12,000-pound captive orca.

PETA submitted testimony calling on federal authorities to prohibit the confinement of orcas (killer whales) at SeaWorld and other marine-mammal parks.

In a spin that would make Dick Cheney proud, SeaWorld execs explained that Dawn's killing (in which her scalp was removed, her arm was disconnected from her body, and her spine, ribs, and face were broken) was "play" gone awry. SeaWorld waited a mere three days before resuming its pricey orca shows, the newest of which is called "Believe," which includes "elaborate set pieces, state-of-the-art multimedia, music, and choreography." Sounds real "educational," doesn't it?

SeaWorld and other greedy for-profit parks leave visitors thinking that orcas are little more than wind-up toys, all called Shamu, when they are in fact highly intelligent predators who, in the wild, would swim up to 100 miles every day and who think, plan, and communicate … and hunt. Dawn was Tilly's third human victim. If Congress doesn't act, who will be number four? Everyone can help by spreading the word to stay away from SeaWorld and other marine theme parks when hitting the road this summer.

Written by Jennifer O'Connor