For Immediate Release:
August 16, 2017
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
San Diego – Below, please find a statement from PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman in response to reports that Kasatka—the matriarch orca who was abducted from the wild and sold to SeaWorld in 1978—was euthanized last night following a lung infection that a former SeaWorld trainer compared to “end stage AIDS”:
The dead bodies at SeaWorld are stacking up about as fast as its stock is falling, with Kasatka dead just a few weeks after the death of her 3-month-old granddaughter. SeaWorld talks of “love” for her and her family, yet it made a business out of tearing her away from her family as well as ripping apart other bonded orcas and shipping them across the country, even separating Kasatka from her podmate in 1984. The abusement park didn’t even respect this orca enough to give her a good-quality life, and it needs to send the remaining marine mammals to seaside sanctuaries before they follow Kasatka—and the 40 orcas before her—to the grave.
PETA (whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”) will be holding a memorial for Kasatka—the third orca and sixth marine mammal to die at SeaWorld this year—at the intersection of Sea World Drive and Sea World Way in San Diego today at 12 noon.
More information is available at SeaWorldOfHurt.com.
