UCF Students Fight Back at School’s SeaWorld Promotion

peta2 Joins Campaign to Expel Orca Abuse

For Immediate Release:
February 24, 2014

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Accompanied by two “orcas,” University of Central Florida (UCF) students will congregate outside the Student Union on Tuesday to demand that the school stop promoting SeaWorld by selling discounted tickets to the theme park. Supporting the students’ cause will be campus outreach members from peta2, PETA’s youth division, including UCF alumna Alanna Wagy. Their point? That SeaWorld takes naturally far-ranging predators, locks them in tiny concrete tanks, and forces them to perform circus-style tricks for a reward of dead fish.

When:   Tuesday, February 25, 12 noon

Where:  Outside the Student Union, UCF campus, Orlando

“Universities are supposed to teach students lessons that will serve them for the rest of their lives, but by partnering with SeaWorld, UCF is saying that animal abuse is acceptable,” says peta2 Director Marta Holmberg. “Instead of selling discounted SeaWorld tickets, UCF should be demanding that SeaWorld release the orcas to seaside sanctuaries, where they can live out their lives in as natural an environment as possible.”      

The orcas at SeaWorld—some of whom were traumatically captured from their family pods in the ocean—suffer physically and psychologically from the constant deprivation and confinement. At least 37 orcas and dozens of dolphins have died at U.S. SeaWorld and affiliated facilities from causes ranging from severe trauma to intestinal gangrene to chronic cardiovascular failure, and the federal government has cited SeaWorld facilities for violating the Animal Welfare Act. The hit documentary Blackfish shows the separation of baby orcas from their mothers at SeaWorld and how one particularly frustrated orca killed a trainer.

For more information, please visit SeaWorldOfHurt.com.