For Orca Week, PETA Blows Lid Off SeaWorld’s South American Sperm Bank

Solitary Orca Sexually Exploited in SeaWorld’s Breeding Program, Sickly Sea Lions Also Kept at Mundo Marino

For Immediate Release:
July 20, 2016

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

SeaWorld recently succumbed to public pressure and agreed to end its orca-breeding program—but what’s to come of its secretive sperm bank? Just in time for Orca Week, PETA is offering a peek into Mundo Marino, the Argentinian marine park where SeaWorld trainers manually collected semen from the lone male orca, Kshamenk, and then used it to forcibly inseminate at least two of the female orcas held captive at SeaWorld’s U.S. abusement parks.

Photos and videos on PETA’s website reveal that Kshamenk, like Blackfish subject Tilikum, was seized from his family and ocean home and has been held in solitary confinement in a tiny tank since 2000, when the only other orca at the park died. When he’s not forced to perform stressful tricks for crowds, Kshamenk floats listlessly in Mundo Marino’s shallow tank.

“Life in a tiny concrete cell is no life at all for an orca who nature equipped to swim fast, dive deep, use his sonar, and interact with his family pod,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on SeaWorld, Mundo Marino, and other cruel marine-mammal parks to retire these animals to seaside sanctuaries so that they can finally be afforded some semblance of a natural life while receiving transitional feeding and veterinary support.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—also points out that sea lions at Mundo Marino appear to suffer from cataracts, likely as a result of having to look directly into the blazing sun to beg tourists for food.

For more information, please visit PETA’s website SeaWorldOfHurt.com.