Stranger Things Star Brett Gelman to Bring SeaWorld San Diego’s Real-Life Horror to Howl-O-Scream in Drive-By PETA Appeal
On Friday, Stranger Things star Brett Gelman will turn SeaWorld’s Howl-O-Scream event upside down with a message reminding would-be visitors that the real scares are reserved for the animals trapped there—courtesy of a giant mobile PETA message that will circle the abusement park. The pointed appeal features Gelman as an unhinged SeaWorld “trainer” straddling a distressed “dolphin” alongside the message, “SeaWorld: We Love Dolphins to Death!”
The striking visual is part of Gelman’s new PETA campaign, which includes a darkly comedic “training video” in which he schools new SeaWorld hires on how to spin the park’s treatment of animals—including rebranding listless orcas as practicing “aquatic meditation” and fights between incompatible dolphins as “unlikely friendships.”
“The monsters on Stranger Things are fictional, but the horror for orcas and dolphins trapped in dismal concrete tanks at SeaWorld is painfully real,” says PETA President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on everyone to skip the scares at SeaWorld and urge them to send these long-suffering animals to seaside sanctuaries.”
When: Friday, October 23, 10 a.m.-6 p.m.
Where: Around SeaWorld San Diego, including Sea World Drive, Mission Bay Drive, W. Mission Bay Drive and Mission Boulevard (each including around Belmont Park), E. Mission Bay Drive, Ingraham Street, and Pacific Beach Drive.
Why: In nature, dolphins maintain dynamic relationships with large social networks and can swim up to 60 miles a day. But at SeaWorld San Diego, they’re confined to cramped concrete tanks where they can do little more than swim in endless circles. More than 40 orcas and at least 580 other dolphins and whales have died at SeaWorld parks. The company replaces non-orca dolphins and whales through its breeding program, in which dolphins are sexually manipulated and sometimes drugged so they can’t fight back when forcibly impregnated.
More than 170,000 PETA supporters have called on SeaWorld to end its cruel breeding program and relocate the animals to seaside sanctuaries.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.
