9 Good Reasons NOT to Take the Kids to SeaWorld
For Immediate Release:
August 15, 2019
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
PETA frequently hears from parents who say that their animal-loving kids were horrified by their visits to SeaWorld and that they never would have bought tickets if they’d known that dolphins, whales, and other animals suffer at the abusement park.
That’s why PETA is sharing our nine reasons not to take kids to SeaWorld.
- There are 140 dolphins at SeaWorld crammed into just seven tanks, and trainers stand on their backs and faces, riding them like surfboards during shows—a practice that can damage their hearing, strain muscles and joints, and exacerbate the injuries caused by confinement to the cramped tanks.
- In the wild, orcas dive more than 3,500 feet, but the deepest tank at SeaWorld is only 35 feet—and since the orcas there can’t dive deep enough to avoid the sun, trainers use black zinc oxide to conceal the animals’ sunburns.
- The more than 40 orcas who’ve died at SeaWorld have reached an average age of only 14—well before reaching the more than 100 years that female orcas can live in the wild.
- The parks’ trainers usually have no formal education in marine biology. Their purpose is to entertain visitors, not educate them.
- SeaWorld was forced to end its orca-breeding program, but it’s still forcibly breeding other dolphins, sometimes after drugging them.
- In captivity, all adult male orcas have collapsed dorsal fins—a condition almost never seen in the wild.
- Touch tanks and other animal “encounters” teach kids the dangerous lesson that it’s OK to handle wild animals against their will.
- Frustrated, desperate, and anxious orcas at SeaWorld gnaw at the iron bars and concrete sides of the tanks, often breaking their teeth.
- Taking kids to SeaWorld teaches them that it’s OK to support businesses that imprison animals for their entire life, simply to provide humans with a few moments of fleeting entertainment.
For more information, please visit SeaWorldOfHurt.com.
