Libero.id - Brilio.net/en - SeaWorld, the worldwide leader in aquatic parks since 1964, has announced last Thursday, March 17th, that it will no longer breed orcas. Furthermore, the main attraction of the park will progressively disappear from the park’s program.
This decision is an important victory for associations defending animal rights, that were denouncing the bad treatments that the orcas had been facing while being raised and kept captive at SeaWorld. Orcas are indeed exceptionally smart predators and having them living in such small ponds is a torture for them. The public became more and more aware of it over the last years, especially thanks to the documentary movie Blackfish in 2013, and the visits of the orcas’ shows were decreasing in viewership every year a bit more.
Before breeding the animals in the park, SeaWorld used to capture the baby orcas in their natural environment, but it stopped forty years ago due to Government interference. The reproduction was thus made in the park through artificial insemination and is now stopping as well, leading to the end of the orcas shows.
“Society is changing and so are we. SeaWorld listens and adapts.”, explained the American company in a press release. SeaWorld currently owns twenty-nine orcas, among which six are living in other partners’ park. Those animals are aged between 1 and 51 years old, won’t be released in the wild nature. This would be highly dangerous for them, given the fact that they were all born in the park and have no idea of how to survive alone in the ocean. The consequences could be dramatic according to SeaWorld, who prefers then to keep them in the park’s ponds and exposed them to the public (but no longer acting in the shows). This new kind of attraction will aim to sensitize the public, and especially the younger ones, to the importance of keeping the ocean clean and protect all the species living in there.
SeaWorld’s emblematic animal will thus slowly disappear, once the current generation will die out. On top of being good news for the animals, it turns out that this decision also pays off financially speaking: since the announcement on Thursday, the group’s share raised by 5%. Maybe it is actually an evolution in society, where stockholders are touched by the faith of others.
Source: giphy.com
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