Linda Simons, SeaWorld’s former safety chief, told PETA that she was fired from her job after she cooperated with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) investigation into the death of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau, who was battered to death by an orca named Tilikum, aka Tilly. We linked Simons up with Good Morning America … Read more »
eschipul / CC by 2.0 It takes a big man to admit he’s made a mistake, and they don’t come any bigger, at least in the travel world, than Arthur Frommer. In a blog post earlier this month, Frommer expressed regret for the times that he recommended SeaWorld in his popular travel guides: … Read more »
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 … Read more »
Sue E / CC by 2.0 The Florida Marlins plan to spend millions on their new stadium, which is set to open in 2012. But they can save countless animals’ lives as well as tons of money by rethinking plans to build two saltwater aquariums as part of the project. Instead of exposing fish to … Read more »
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 … Read more »
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. … Read more »
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 … Read more »
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 … Read more »
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 … Read more »
A judge has temporarily ruled that video footage and photographs of the violent killing of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau by Tilly the killer whale will not be made public. The fight over that will rage on, I’m sure. But the autopsy report has been released today, and it makes it very clear that Dawn Brancheau’s … Read more »
The temperature may have been well below freezing, but PETA’s foxes heated up the bustling streets of Helsinki, the capital of Finland—which has a record of killing more foxes for their fur than almost any other nation. Thanks to Riina Laine’s masterful body painting, these ladies were the objects of nonstop attention—and they spread … Read more »
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ephotion/ / CC BY 2.0 Remember Keiko? As you may recall, Keiko was a wild orca who was captured in Iceland in 1979 and sold to a series of aquariums, where he was forced to perform tricks for food. He became sick and severely depressed. In 1993, after the movie Free Willy … Read more »
PETA’s forecast for SeaWorld San Antonio—cloudy with a chance of freedom: On Saturday, PETA’s “Let Orcas Out of Prison” banner flew across the sky while dedicated PETA supporters on the ground spread the word that trainers and animals will continue to get hurt or die until SeaWorld frees the animals to sanctuaries. … Read more »
watchwithkristin / CC by SA 2.0 “How do you put an interactive, social animal, one of the smartest animals in the world … and you’re going to stick them in a tub and make them do tricks? How do you do that? Because they make money? It’s disgusting and SeaWorld is absolutely wrong. This … Read more »
OK, so we didn’t get to see a song-and-dance number featuring Steve Martin and vegetarian Alec Baldwin—who also narrated PETA’s now-classic documentary Meet Your Meat—but we’re still pretty happy about how the highly buzzed Food Inc./Cove face-off turned out. The Oscar for Best Documentary went to frontrunner The Cove—the universally acclaimed examination of Japan’s bloody … Read more »
