Changing the view of our world... and Sea World

The joy of having Netflix is that now Matt and I can watch documentaries we never would have before. We learn about anything from juicing and the food industry, to hard hitting things like national debt and bullying, or silly things like man hair, living from craigslist or what true happiness looks like around the world. One of our favorites are watching features on nature and the animal kingdom.

Lately, Matt has been watching documentaries on killer whales. I only caught about 15 minutes of the first one called "Blackfish", but it was disturbing enough that I've had nightmares since. It talked about life for the killer whales in captivity and the things that Sea World (and other whale keepers) don't say. The poor living conditions of the whales - the whales being kept in small, dark cages when not performing, the horrible life of a male killer whale in captivity being "raked" by the female whales in a matriarchal society and only being rewarded when they do what the trainer wants.

I, unfortunately, saw footage of a trainer being "played with" by one whale at Sea World - a whale who has a history of aggression and "incidents". This man nearly escaped death and the whole sight was horrifying!

Now I've heard of this situation once before, but not as often as the documentary showed. And not all killer whales do this. The worst part is that this whale - who has a history of aggression and killing trainers -  is being bred by Sea World. Actually this one whale's sperm has been used for 50 percent of the whales in the Sea World system! Really?! Who thought that was a good idea?!

Both documentaries we watched mentioned that there is no history of any killer whale in the wild ever hurting - much less killing - a human. Shouldn't this be proof enough that killer whales don't belong in captivity?!

This show shared a story about an animal park in Spain that Sea World sent four whales over to. The park was not ready when the whales came, but the greedy owners didn't want to lose any money so they opened the park anyway. The whales got sick from eating - yes eating - the pool and at least one trainer was attacked and killed by one of the whales. They showed footage of a Sea World executive being interviewed saying they had never heard of this theme park - even though their whales and trainers were sent over and were there at the time when this young trainer was attacked.

Even if half of what we saw was not completely accurate, I still have no desire to ever go to Sea World again. Just horrible!

The second documentary was much less scary but disturbing in another way. This one was called "The Whale" and was about a baby killer whale named "Luna" in Vancouver, Canada, who was separated from his family. Whales are very social creatures and little Luna was lonely. So he started interacting with the people of the Nootka Sound and became somewhat of a local pet. The townspeople loved him and Luna had a new family - until the local department of fisheries got involved and made a mess. They worried that human interaction with Luna would endanger him, and they fined people $100,000 who talked, petted or even looked at Luna. So Luna spent several lonely years trying anything and everything to get people to play with him. Seriously it's the saddest story ever. One scientist offered to lead Luna down to his family but the officials wouldn't allow it.

After several years, the officials decided they were tired of fighting with the locals. They decided to capture him and fly him - not let him swim - down to his family. Again, why do people think they can make a decision for this poor animal. Makes me so angry!

When people started looking into the officials plan, they realized that a decision was made to sell Luna to a theme park if his family didn't accept him. Angry! 

The local people now fought even harder to try to protect their little friend and keep him out of captivity. 

As the officials built the pen to capture Luna, a local Native American tribe got in a canoe and drove around singing to distract Luna and keep him out of the pen. It was the cutest thing ever because Luna was so happy playing with them. The efforts of this tribe paid off because eventually the officials gave up trying to capture Luna. But then they want back to fining people who interacted with him. Why they never called up the fisherman who volunteered to lead Luna down to his family or just left him alone to play with the townspeople is beyond me?!

Lonely Luna went around getting into trouble with no one to play with - not understanding why he was being ignored. And at the age of 6, he was killed by playing too close to a tugboat.

The whole story is the saddest thing ever and makes us both angry at people who make poor and selfish decisions for animals. Never again Sea World... never again. 

As a result, I told Matt I'm not watching any more killer whale documentaries - it's too hard for me not to get upset and want to go punch someone in the face. Matt, of course, already has a third one queued up. Silly man :)