'SeaWorld Kills' Message Greets 5K Runners as PETA Spotlights Decades of Marine Mammal Deaths

‘SeaWorld Kills’ Message Greets 5K Runners as PETA Spotlights Decades of Marine Mammal Deaths

For Immediate Release:
April 23, 2026

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Orlando –

“SeaWorld Kills.” That’s the unexpected message that will greet the marine park’s Seven Seas Food Festival 5K runners on Saturday as PETA supporters set up giant illuminated signs alerting them to the more than 40 orcas and more than 500 other dolphins and whales who have died so far at SeaWorld parks. The animal allies will also call for an end to SeaWorld’s sordid breeding program, in which dolphins are sexually abused and sometimes drugged so that they can’t fight back when staff thrust semen-filled tubes up into their uteruses.

On Sunday, a PETA runner was ejected from the park after she won SeaWorld’s San Diego 5K while wearing a “SeaWorld Kills” shirt and advocating for Corky—the longest-held captive orca in the world—to be transferred to a seaside sanctuary.

“While SeaWorld encourages people to race around its park, dolphins languish in barren tanks within it, denied their need to swim vast distances, choose their own mates, and engage in their natural behaviors,” says PETA President Tracy Reiman. “PETA encourages everyone to help spare dolphins a life of misery by boycotting SeaWorld and demanding that the marine mammals imprisoned there be released to seaside sanctuaries.”

Where: 7007 Sea World Dr., Orlando (Near the intersection of Central Florida Parkway and Sea World Dr.)

When: Saturday, April 25, 6:30 a.m.

Starlynn Costa, seaworld 5k, race, dolphins die here — *A PETA runner who won last weekend’s SeaWorld 5K race in San Diego and was then kicked out of the park. Credit: PETA*

Why: In nature, dolphins can swim up to 60 miles a day and dive thousands of feet deep, and orcas maintain complex family relationships and travel up to 150 miles daily. But at SeaWorld, they’re confined to tanks and often housed with incompatible tankmates, leading to attacks and injuries. Many die far short of their natural life expectancy from bacterial infections, fractured skulls, and other preventable causes.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.