‘Whales & Dolphins Want Out’—New Ads Take Aim at SeaWorld Orlando

PETA Urges Mall Patrons to Stay Away From Captive Whale and Dolphin Displays

For Immediate Release:
July 11, 2019

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

“Whales & Dolphins Want Out. Don’t Support Captive Animal Shows.” That’s the message on new PETA ads that just went up at Lake Buena Vista Factory Stores following the deaths of more than 40 orcas in the history of SeaWorld’s parks and just weeks after PETA shared a new veterinary report asserting that bottlenose dolphins at all three SeaWorld locations have open wounds and extensive scarring on their faces and bodies—but trainers still ride on their backs and stand on their faces during sea-circus performances.

“From the orcas who float listlessly in shallow tanks to the bottlenose dolphins who are used as surfboards and launch pads in demeaning circus-style shows, SeaWorld is a spectacle of animal suffering,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is urging kind people to keep SeaWorld off their summer vacation itineraries.”

In nature, orcas may swim as far as 140 miles in a day and bottlenose dolphins may swim up to 60 miles a day, dive to depths of nearly 1,500 feet, and maintain dynamic relationships within a large social network. At SeaWorld, 140 of them are squeezed into just seven small tanks and can’t escape attacks from other frustrated, aggressive dolphins. At the company’s annual meeting in June, Alec Baldwin presented PETA’s shareholder question asking when the parks will stop allowing trainers to place their full bodyweight on dolphins’ sensitive lower jaws, which may damage their hearing, strain muscles and joints, and exacerbate the injuries caused by confinement to the cramped tanks.

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