Orca Captivity Research Paper

Orcas have been stuck in captivity since the mid-1900s. They were first captured from their ocean environment and moved to tanks that were small and modified for their conditions. John Hargrove a former SeaWorld trainer said, “...I was thrilled to be apart of the orcas’ lives for so long, I finally came to the realization that if I had to live their lives, it would be hell. Captivity is always captivity, no matter how gentle the jailer”(9). That is why, regardless of their ultimate fate, orcas should never, under any circumstance be bred, raised, or kept in captivity.
Orcinus orcas, also known as killer whales, have been used as a sense of entertainment for close to a hundred years. Orcas end up in captivity by one of two ways. They can be …show more content…
A Killer Whale’s dorsal fin is located in the middle of their back and it does not have a bone, but instead is made up of tissue called collagen. It is a vital part of them because it helps them make sharp turns quick and allows them to ventilate the warm air and water away from their body when they swim to prevent themselves from overheating. The current tank sizes for most captive whales are around thirty-five feet deep and .0615 miles long which converts close to ninety-nine meters (Stowe). The tanks affect their fins because since they are so small the whales generally spend a lot more time breaching at the surface during training, shows, and free time. When the orcas do this it causes their fin to be exposed to the hot temperatures of the air for longer periods of times then they should. When this happens it takes the moisture of the fin out and then it falls to one side. One other reason why the fin collapses is because wild orcas swim anywhere from three to twenty-nine miles per hour in the wild. The speed that they reach allows the water to push up against the fin and support it to help stay up. In captivity there is simply not enough room for orcas to go that fast so they lose some of that support on their fin and it causes it to droop to one side. SeaWorld has claimed that there is a 25% chance that a whale will have a collapsed dorsal fin whether …show more content…
From 1967-2015 there had been a hundred and fifty-four incidents whether the orca pushes someone into the water, tried to bit them, drug someone to the bottom of the water for a while, or killed them (Jacobs). Many of the cases people do not end up hearing about because they try to keep the information from the press. One of the most famous stories is of a killer whale named Tilikum that killed three people, two were trainers and one was a man that came into the park after hours. Tilikum was taken from his family, lived by himself in a cement tank for almost a year, then put in a small tank with two other females and he was constantly getting beat up, so it would make sense why he was stressed and angry (Howard) There have been even more incidents from 2015 till now that have caused some parks to not let the trainers perform in the water with the whales. The bizarre thing is that the number of whale attacks that have happened in the wild with humans is close to nonexistent. Even though people research and watch orcas all the time in the wild, there has only been a couple incident where an orca went after a person but they are taken as the whales just misunderstood the person as prey and immediately stopped once they realize what it was. Orcas should not be kept in captivity because they are hurting people and it is not their fault because they just want to be