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“Sea World orcas work as many as eight shows a day, 365 days a year. In the ocean, these whales can swim up to ninety miles a day. In captivity, the tanks are measured in feet. In the ocean, orcas have highly evolved and cohesive matriarchal cultures. Generations of family members, combining both females and males, spend their entire lives together—with each family, or pod, communicating its own unique dialect. In captivity, little to none of this exists. Orca culture is effectively destroyed.”

“The zoo industry is full of such contradictions. It helps people learn about the importance of animals, but not what is vitally important to the animals themselves. Sea mammals, elephants, and primates are capable of so many amazing feats, but they are incapable of demonstrating their intentions and making their own choices. The industry encourages you to think that these animals are intelligent, but not intelligent enough to have the ability to resist. The industry encourages you to care about them, so that you and your children will return for a visit. But it does not want you to care so much that you might develop empathy and begin to question whether these animals actually want to be there.”

“Sea World was treading carefully. Park officials stated repeatedly how essential and valuable Tilikum had been to their operations. This is true. Zoos and circuses are a business, and Blackstone paid 2.3 billion dollars for its purchase. The most productive employees in that business, in terms of labor and revenue, are the orcas themselves. Tilikum has performed for almost nineteen years in Orlando, sired thirteen calves, and produced in the range of a billion dollars in revenue. Nevertheless, Sea World did not believe that Tilikum had earned the right to retire. None of that billion dollars would be used to build an ocean sanctuary for older captive orcas. They do not deserve it.”