Evelyn Hunt

Ms. Freestone
English 11
May 1, 2015
Not So Free Willy
Orcinus orca is one of the largest, most intelligent mammals in the world. They
communicate effectively amongst themselves, both about practical matters and abstract ideas.
Orcas develop complex emotional relationships with each other. They live in pods of five to
thirty whales, sometimes joining pods and raising numbers to over a hundred. Baby orcas stay
with their mothers for their whole lives. In their natural habitats, they have similar life spans to
humans, in one case living more than a hundred years. Orcas are truly magical creatures.
Unfortunately, humans exist, and have interfered with the natural order of these magnificent
animals. Orcas are kept in confinement at amusement parks, like SeaWorld, and are horribly
abused; they are given nowhere near enough mental stimulation, are physically unkempt and
mistreated, and are dealt with cruelly in regard to their family structures and personal beings.
The so-called killer whale is the apex predator of the ocean. Orcas hunt methodically,
in groups, with real ingenuity. They can knock a seal off an iceberg, attack creatures much larger
and with the same level of intelligence, and have no natural predators to take them down. Their
brains are larger and more complicated than a humans and could very well be more intelligent
than us. So, when theyre confined to an area a fraction of the size of their normal living space,
life can get a little more difficult. The tanks in various SeaWorld parks range from 4.5 million
gallons of water to up to 6.2 million gallons. This seems huge to a human, but to a 5,000 to
12,000 pound animal, it is really no larger than a bathtub. Not to mention, in the staging area

before a performance, the orcas are confined to the medical tank, sized only about eight feet
deep. They can be kept in this shallow pool for any time ranging from fifteen minutes to several
hours. (Hargrove). This tank is meant for injured or ill orcas only so they can be accessible to the
trainers and veterinarians for medical care. Orcas are meant for the ocean, thousands and
thousands feet deep. It is not fair or ethical to curtail them to eight measly feet of water.
In a normal day, a wild orca can swim more than a hundred miles comfortably. Captive whales
would have to circle their puny tanks hundreds of times to make up for the deficit. Of course, in
a painfully sterile tank, would you really want to swim around and around when you could just
comfortably float? So instead, the orcas engage in some more harmful behaviors.
Orcas in captivity simply do not have the activity necessary to engage their powerful
minds. The trainers truly do love and care for the whales and do their best to keep them
occupied, but at the end of the day, the orcas are left in small tanks with nothing to do. Some
scrape the paint off the walls of the tank, just to distract themselves. Obviously, this is really
unhealthy. It hurts their jaws, it hurts their teeth, it hurts their skulls, and honestly, if the poor
thing is scraping the paint off the walls, it is really in need of something to do. Another negative
to this behavior is that it makes the rest of the pool difficult to orient in. The trainers need to be
able to know where they are in a pool to safely swim with the orcas. The whales regularly
destroy markers and create new ones, also creating new hazards for both the people and animals.
Other things orcas do to upset the monotony of their lives in captivity include banging their
heads against the wall, fighting with other orcas, and forcing themselves to vomit. SeaWorld has
literally driven its whales to bulimia. Clearly, there is a huge problem here. Not only is this
extremely sad, it also has huge physical impacts. The stomach bile damages the orcas
esophageal lining and eats the enamel on the teeth. Because orcas only get one set of teeth, when

the teeth are destroyed due to the animals horrible living conditions, the orca is further subjected
to extremely painful dentistry. Because of life-threatening bacteria slipping into the tiny pinholes
created by the acid, the whales teeth have to be drilled open and flushed throughout the rest of
the whales life. John Hargrove, a former orca trainer at SeaWorld, compared it to taking a small
child to the dentist. They dont understand why its happening, they just know it hurts. Several
orcas in the history of SeaWorld have died horrible, painful deaths because of this. This isnt an
issue in the ocean because they arent bored out of their minds, and they also arent subject to
bacteria found in the frozen fish they are fed.
In the open ocean, orcas have a varied diet of all sorts of fish, seals, birds, whales,
dolphins, squid, and much more. They gather water from their diet because, as a sea creature,
they dont have access to fresh water. At SeaWorld, they are fed a diet without much variety,
generally consisting of a couple different kinds of fish, as well as dozens of pounds of gelatin to
make up for the lost water. This is an unhealthy diet for the whales.
Although SeaWorld denies this, several trainers that have left their positions report withholding
food from the orcas as punishment. Orcas are giant animals, needing several hundred pounds of
food a day to maintain their enormous mass. On occasion, SeaWorld will restrict a whale to only
about sixty pounds of food a day. This is not enough to satisfy a whale or provide enough
calories.
As previously mentioned, the confines of the current living conditions are not large enough for
an orca. Not only is it mentally harmful, it also has some huge physical impacts. For one, the
whales are exposed to the sun and elements a lot more than they normally would be. The whales
of SeaWorld suffer from horrible sunburns that the depths of the ocean would otherwise protect
against. Mosquitos are also a new threat. The insects have access to the exposed skin, especially

at night when the whales are floating at the surface, an unnatural behavior. The orcas are at
increased levels of threat to the diseases transmitted by the bugs because their immune systems
are degraded. The sunlight exposure and the bacteria that get in through their ruined teeth break
down the immune systems. At least two orcas in SeaWorld parks have died from diseases
transmitted by mosquitos. (Jett, Ventre). The insects carry several diseases that orcas have not
built up any immunity to. Why would they? The orcas in SeaWorld are really like a new species,
fresh out of the oven. They have to deal with new problems and living conditions that they have
no footing against evolutionarily. Another variable that orcas struggle against is the chemicals in
their pools. They are necessary to keep the waters clear and clean, but hurt the eyes and skin of
the whales. Accidents and mistakes happen sometimes. Sometimes those accidents result in the
orcas not being able to open their eyes or having their skin peel off in huge sheets. This is not
healthy, safe, or fair. If youre going to take an animal out of its home and away from its family,
then the least you can do is provide it with a livable environment.
The orcas in the small tanks also have to contest against social issues that are not present in the
wild. Being shoved into a really small area with others that might not be so easy to get along
with does not make for happy living conditions. The whales have really sharp teeth and have no
qualms about raking another that is up in its business. This isnt a problem in the wild much
because there are hundreds of thousands of miles to flee to if theres a confrontation. Not so
much in the pools that measure only dozens of feet. This aggression only triggers more problems.
The gashes bleed heavily, can be easily infected, and are really painful. It also is psychologically
scarring. It is equivalent to a person being trapped in a jail cell with a violent person that cant be
communicated with. It is really stressful.

Another effect the small pools have is the collapsed dorsal fin. All the male orcas in SeaWorld
and several of the females have this physical trait. The corporation claims that it occurs in nature
and is perfectly healthy. In reality, about 0.1 percent of wild orcas have collapsed fins. It
generally only occurs with whales that are sick, old, or are dehydrated. The whales dorsal fin is
comprised of collagen rather than bone, and can reach up to six and a half feet in length. Thats
quite a bit of tissue to uphold, but water pressure from high speeds keeps it muscly and strong.
Captive orcas simply do not get enough exercise to keep their dorsal fins upright. This can also
happen with the tail flukes, or the back lobes of the tail. While the dorsal fin may not seem vital
for survival, it is obvious why a large ocean mammal would need a functional tail.
Orcas have matriarchal societies, with a dominant female in charge of the pod. In the
ocean, their status is guaranteed, and they rarely have to display their dominance. The matriarch
is the boss about everything. She controls the migration, the feeding, the sleeping, down to the
penny. Her daughters and granddaughters stay with her for her whole life. The sons stay with
their mothers, leaving only to mate and then return to their home pod. These whales are very
similar to humans. They are the most widely ranged mammals besides us. Pods are scattered all
over the world, and each has its own unique dialect. The pods in areas near each other seem to be
able to understand each other, but generally do not associate with each other except in a few rare
cases.
The people who captured and sold the whales to companies like SeaWorld or the Seaquarium had
no issues picking and choosing helpless calves from all over the world. They captured babies to
save on shipping costs and because they were less aggressive. They tore families apart for
entertainment purposes. Then, after essentially orphaning dozens of infant orcas, they put them
in too small enclosures with other whales that they cannot communicate with. These whales

didnt really have time to learn the social dos and donts of their society, and so the whole social
dynamic was thrown off. Furthermore, these poor confused creatures somehow have to factor
humans into their social hierarchy. In nature, the dominant female has say over everything.
Suddenly, these whales have to juggle the temperament of a very aggressive sharp-toothed
creature with something that is in charge of providing food. Because of this skewed environment
in which theyve lived their whole lives, it is very real possibility that these orcas can never go
back to the wild. These peaceful creatures have been warped into aggressive, dangerous animals.
They are dangerous to the humans caring for them and to their co-prisoners. They are fated to
live out the rest of their lives in captivity of some form. It is the worlds responsibility to make
that captivity as positive as possible. Some solutions to this include creating sea pens for them.
Anything but the dull, painful experience currently going on.
A particularly cruel aspect of this situation is that SeaWorld has no respect for the family
structures that are so deeply ingrained in these creatures. The relationships within the families of
orcas are extremely tight and meaningful. Baby orcas stay with their mothers for their entire lives
until she passes away. Male orcas sometimes die shortly after their mothers because this bond is
so tight. SeaWorld has absolutely no issue separating families left and right. It began with the
original captives, ripped away from their families as infants. As the population grew, so did the
wealth. Though corporations like SeaWorld are greedy, cruel, and careless, they arent stupid.
They realize the worth of a dominant female. In the case of Katsatka and Takara, (mother and
daughter whales in San Diego), they were both aggressively dominant, and good at keeping the
other whales in line. There wasnt an emergent matriarch in Florida and chaos reigned. So, it was
a simple matter of flying Takara to Florida, apart from her mother and sending them both into
deep spirals of what can only be described as mourning. Katsatka was vocalizing shrilly to try to

find her daughter, sending out long-range echolocations in attempts to sense her. Unfortunately,
her baby was already drugged heavily and on her way across the country. Things like this happen
all the time. Families are torn apart everyday to keep SeaWorld a several billion-dollar company.
Not only that, but theyve also instituted an artificial insemination breeding program to create
more babies to be separated from their families. Obviously, this is a really invasive procedure for
both male and female whales. Its extremely disrespectful, really exhausting for the mothers, and
often ends with a stillbirth. According to us.whales.org, there have been 30 miscarriages or
stillborn calves in captivity. The female orcas are bred really young, when theyre only about
eight or nine years old, sometimes are inbred, and are bred again and again without proper time
to recover from the previous pregnancy. A natural orca will only breed when they reach the age
of 10-15 years of age. Breeding them that young is physically damaging and sometimes results in
the rejection of the calf. The mother is still basically a child herself and was taken from her own
mother too soon to learn how to parent. Inbreeding is something that also never occurs in the
wild. The matriarch of the pod enforces this rule strongly. As in other species, it can cause birth
defects and other health problems, as well as being psychologically scarring.
Orcas pregnancies last about eighteen months and require an extreme amount of energy to
sustain. The mother is building and birthing a baby that is several hundred pounds. To further
complicate this, the small pools filled with other aggressive whales makes the first few months
after the birth even more exhausting. The captive born babies have to learn to nurse and float at
the same time, a behavior that is completely unnatural to a newborn baby orca. In the wild,
whales are constantly in motion. This isnt possible when the area of motion is reduced to a
fraction of the size. The other whales in the enclosure are not family members, they are under
extreme amounts of stress, and they have been known to harm babies of other orcas occasionally

in the past. So, the mother has to be vigilant against several threats for several more months.
Then, after the baby becomes a little more self sufficient, the mother is impregnated again.
Normally, a mother orca waits about five years before having another calf. Captive orcas have
pregnancies forced upon them mere months after the last one. This has huge physical, mental,
and emotional impacts.
Orcas are beautiful, intelligent creatures. They dont deserve to be in captivity in the first
place, but now that its been forced upon them, they do deserve a life that is bearable. Orcas
deserve enough intellectual stimulation, proper physical treatment and accommodation, and for
their family structures and personal selves to be respected.

Works Cited
"8 Reasons Orcas Don't Belong at SeaWorld - SeaWorld of Hurt." SeaWorld of Hurt. N.p., n.d.
Web. 22 April 2015.

"Basic Facts About Orcas." Defenders of Wildlife. N.p., 03 Apr. 2012. Web. 22 April 2015.

"SeaWorld Has New Ad Campaign After Disparaging Documentary." The New York Times. The
New York Times, 23 Mar. 2015. Web. 22 April 2015.

"Whale Kills a Trainer at SeaWorld." The New York Times. The New York Times, 24 Feb. 2010.
Web. 25 Apr. 2015.

Hargrove, John, and Howard Chua-Eoan. Beneath the Surface. New York City, NY: Palgrave
Macmillian, 2015. Print.

Kennedy, Jennifer. Why Does a Killer Whales Dorsal Fin Collapse? Killer Whale (Orca)
Dorsal Fin Collapse. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 May 2015.

Jett, John, and Jeffrey Ventre. Orca (Orcinus) Captivity and Vulnerability to Mosquitotransmitted Viruses. Orca (Orcinus Orca) Captivity and Vulnerability to Mosquito-transmitted
5.2 (2012): 1-8. Web.
The Fate of Captive Orcas. WDC, Whale and Dolphin Consevation. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 May
2015.
I cried nine times in the writing of this paper. Fun fact.