Ashanti Concert at SeaWorld Disrupted by Yacht With PETA’s ‘SeaWorld Kills’ Banner
For Immediate Release:
July 18, 2026
Contact:
Hannah Nelson 202-483-7382
Moments ago, in full view of concert attendees, a 49-foot yacht emblazoned with PETA’s “SeaWorld Kills” banner made a splash behind Ashanti’s stage at SeaWorld San Diego’s Bayside Amphitheater. And earlier today, a crowd of PETA supporters rallied outside the abusement park bearing signs that read, “Ashanti: No Dolphin is Happy in a Tank,” and “Ashanti: It’s Foolish to Support SeaWorld” to urge concertgoers to consider the suffering dolphins and whales endure in SeaWorld’s barren concrete tanks. Photos of the disruption are available here.
Credit: PETA
“The real heartbreak isn’t in Ashanti’s lyrics, it’s in SeaWorld’s tanks where dolphins are drugged and sexually abused, mother orcas have had their babies taken away, and thinking, feeling animals waste away in concrete prisons,” says PETA President Tracy Reiman. “PETA urges everyone to help spare animals a life of misery by never going to SeaWorld.”
In nature, orcas can swim up to 150 miles a day and dive deep beneath the ocean’s surface, but at SeaWorld, they’re confined to cramped concrete tanks and often housed with incompatible tankmates, leading to attacks and injuries. In SeaWorld’s dolphin breeding program, male bottlenose dolphins are masturbated, and females are taken from the water and sometimes drugged so they can’t fight back while staff shove tubes filled with semen into their uteruses—practices that go against the natural breeding habits of dolphins and other whales.
PETA encourages everyone to urge SeaWorld to stop breeding dolphins and whales and send them to seaside sanctuaries where they can live in peace.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—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.
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