Blackfish - the plight for freedom for cetaceans.

[Gypaetus Barbatus]

Blackfish - Notorious killer whale Tilikum is responsible for the deaths of three individuals, including a top killer whale trainer. Blackfish shows the sometimes devastating consequences of keeping such intelligent and sentient creatures in captivity.

So lately, I've been listening to a lot of anti-caps and pro-caps about the plight for cetaceans to be freed from their tanks. Blackfish tells a lot of facts SeaWorld tries to cover up and I'm glad they exposed those facts, on the other side, they really use emotions to get people to the anti-cap side. I advise everyone to do their research and come to their conclusion themselves, through documentaries, news articles, videos.

What I want to focus on is the fact that (in my opinion) these sentient cetaceans simply do not well in captivity. There has been a lot of evidence revealing why they don't belong in captivity, and though I agree with most, just putting them back in the ocean like that is not an option either. I think, the best for these cetaceans is to phase out captive breeding and capturing them, and retire them to a natural seapen where they can live out the rest of their live, as natural as possible. Some might even be released, like Lolita and Morgan. I think they will stand a chance, if they would be given one.

What's your opinion?

(Note: I'm sorry if this is in the wrong board, I was seriously unsure where to put it. Sorry.)

[Lonin]

Yeah, some animals do fine or even thrive in captivity. Killer whales aren't one of them. When an animal has a drastically shortened lifespan (20 years vs 30-50 for males and 60-90 for females) in captivity there's something wrong there :B
They should definitely be phased out and given that capturing wild ones is very difficult now and more are dying than being born that's pretty likely unless something drastic happens.

We've never seen Blackfish though

[Grimace]

Yeah, some animals do fine or even thrive in captivity. Killer whales aren't one of them. When an animal has a drastically shortened lifespan (20 years vs 30-50 for males and 60-90 for females) in captivity there's something wrong there :B
They should definitely be phased out and given that capturing wild ones is very difficult now and more are dying than being born that's pretty likely unless something drastic happens.

We've never seen Blackfish though

This.
Although as bad as it has been for the specific animals in captivity, it has helped whales in general.

[FuzzyThePunkCat]

I watched that a few days ago on Netflix. It is very upsetting that their lifespan is decreased that dramatically and SeaWorld acts like it is just their normal lifespan. It was also so upsetting when they took the baby whale from its mom ugh x.x

[wibeke]

I still haven't seen Blackfish (planning on doing as soon as I have time) but I've never been a fan of having whales in captivity. Whales are such large, intelligent and almost human-like animals, it's impossible to just stick them in an enclosure and expect them to be okay.

People say that the fact that they educate the public makes up for the issues that captivity causes but I don't think that sends a good message. You shouldn't need to see a whale do a backflip or jump through a hoop to say, "hey, maybe we shouldn't let them go extinct."
If you want to see whales, go on a whale watch.

[Gypaetus Barbatus]

I agree, wibeke. True, it's had it's good parts of keeping them in captivity, but now we know it's wrong. And we should do something about it. Even if SeaWorld rescues animals and educates the public, it's no excuse to keep these sentient beings in a tank that has little to no stimulation to them. And often too, these animals live together in tanks actually too small for them, leading to a lot of conflicts and unnatural behaviour.

[Gypaetus Barbatus]

Bump.