Photo of injured orca at SeaWorld.
By Elizabeth Batt / Digital Journal / October 1, 2012
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), says it is planning to protest outside of SeaWorld San Diego on Wednesday, following an horrific injury to one of the marine park’s killer whales.
PETA who has already called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (APHIS) to launch an investigation into the gruesome injury received by Nakai on Sept. 20, says it is now planning a protest Wednesday to urge the federal government to take action against the marine park.
Nakai, an 11-year-old orca at SeaWorld San Diego, had his lower jaw sheared off to the bone with an injury so severe said Washington DC-based writer Tim Zimmermann, that the detached piece “Was big enough and intact enough for SeaWorld to retrieve it from the bottom of the pool.”
SeaWorld maintained today that Nakai’s injury occurred when he collided with the side of the pool after a possible altercation with two other killer whales, Ikaika and Keet. But experts are questioning SeaWorld’s theory and what really caused the injury.
Ingrid Visser, a New Zealand-based orca specialist with Orca Research Trust recently visited SeaWorld and took photos of her own. From her photos, Visser believes that what look like puncture wounds below the main injury, may indicate teeth marks from another whale explained the CBS8 News.
Meanwhile, PETA is asking federal authorities to charge the park with cruelty for what it calls a “preventable attack.” The animal welfare group also added that SeaWorld was in direct violation of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA) that requires marine mammals not compatible with one another, to be housed in a separate enclosure.
“The AWA makes it clear that marine mammals that are not compatible must not be housed in the same enclosure,” said PETA, “Yet SeaWorld parks have a long history of housing incompatible orcas from widely divergent groups together in enclosures—and the result has been stress, agitation, aggressive and bloody raking, serious injury, and death.”
PETA members, accompanied by a costumed “bloodied, bandaged orca”, plan to descend on SeaWorld in San Diego on Wednesday, said the group in a press release to Digital Journal.
“The lives of orcas at SeaWorld consist of privation, stress, injury, and premature death,” said PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. “Their cruel confinement turns them into crazed ticking time bombs who attack and have even killed each other.”
PETA’s protest will take place at SeaWorld, 399 SeaWorld Dr., San Diego, Calif. on Wednesday October 3, at noon.
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Amidst our own issues, this story has teeth, and this is on-point and increasingly familiar theme at our theme park:”… SeaWorld parks have a long history of housing incompatible orcas from widely divergent groups together in enclosures—and the result has been stress, agitation, aggressive and bloody raking, serious injury, and death.”
And this statement reflects other facts, like no trainers in the water with the killers,
“Their cruel confinement turns them into crazed ticking time bombs who attack and have even killed each other.”
if they kno its a hard time for them to b together why try to train them all to be in the same enviornment? what are you going to do wait till the killl each other and there are none left. Stop it and jus go back to having dolphin shows. KILLER WHALES ARE WHAT THEY ARE LET THEM BE
The Orca’s lives in that bathtub compared to wild open oceans is a far cry…
its for corporate profit…sad and typical of “America’s Finest Tourist Plantation”
for more on Orca’s (AKA “Killer” Whales) lives behind the scenes:
“How Does SeaWorld Masturbate their Stud Killer Whales? Rocker Tommy Lee Says “Cow Vaginas” And He Is Almost Right.”
http://theorcaproject.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/how-does-seaworld-masturbate-their-stud-killer-whales-rocker-tommy-lee-says-%E2%80%9Ccow-vaginas%E2%80%9D-and-he-is-almost-right/
and look up The Orca Project! ….take your kids to the beach to see whales in the wild instead of an Amusement Park!
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