Sharna Burgess Dances Underwater for New Anti-SeaWorld PETA Ad

For Immediate Release:
October 8, 2021

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

While hitting the Dancing With the Stars stage for the beloved show’s 30th season, Sharna Burgess is hitting the water—dance costume and all—for a brand-new PETA campaign that takes a dive into the reasons why people should stay away from SeaWorld.

In an exclusive behind-the-scenes video, Burgess points out that orcas and other dolphins at SeaWorld are completely denied their freedom—something everyone can relate to after the last year. “We’ve just come out of a near year-long lockdown because of COVID,” she says. “And think about how you or your loved ones may have been losing their mind a little bit, losing themselves, being locked in the house. And now think about that for these animals.”

More than 40 orcas have died at SeaWorld so far, and although the park stopped breeding them under public pressure and as a result of California’s ban on the practice, it still displays 20 orcas and crams 140 other dolphins into just seven small tanks—and it’s still breeding unwilling female bottlenose dolphins, sometimes by drugging them so that they can’t fight back.

Burgess is part of a growing list of celebrities—including Bella Thorne, Cassie Randolph, Pamela Anderson, and Krysten Ritter—who’ve teamed up with PETA to speak out against marine parks.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit SeaWorldOfHurt.com or follow PETA on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.