{"id":41654,"date":"2014-04-07T12:00:44","date_gmt":"2014-04-07T11:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=41654"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:35:07","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:35:07","slug":"shocking-court-documents-expose-seaworlds-continued-cruelty-of-orca-whales","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/04\/shocking-court-documents-expose-seaworlds-continued-cruelty-of-orca-whales\/","title":{"rendered":"Shocking Court Documents Expose SeaWorld\u2019s Continued Cruelty of Orca Whales"},"content":{"rendered":"

SeaWorld has faced intense criticism since the release of Blackfish<\/a><\/i>,\u00a0a documentary telling the story of orca whales kept in captivity at SeaWorld theme parks in California, Florida and Texas. Now court\u00a0documents\u00a0discovered by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals<\/a> (PETA)\u00a0reveal that SeaWorld is pumping these marine animals full of psychotropic drugs.<\/p>\n

\"orca<\/a>

\u201cThey do not cope with being kept in these tanks. They survive to some degree, but they don\u2019t thrive to any degree,\u201d said Ingrid Visser, founder of the Orca Research Trust.<\/p><\/div>\n

A sworn affidavit (see below)\u00a0filed in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice during a dispute between SeaWorld and Marineland over the transport of the killer whale Ikaika, revealed that trainers give their orcas the psychoactive drug benzodiazepine, a class of drugs that includes Xanax and Valium.<\/p>\n

Jared Goodman, director of Animal Law at PETA, told BuzzFeed<\/a> that he believes the leaked documents will play a key role in SeaWorld\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe veterinary records show that orcas at SeaWorld are given psychotropic drugs to stop them from acting aggressively towards each other in the stressful, frustrating conditions in which they\u2019re confined instead of funding the development of coastal sanctuaries\u2014the only humane solution,\u201d Goodman said.<\/p>\n

Blackfish<\/i>, mostly through the testimony of former SeaWorld employees, shows how the whales, frustrated and bored with their captivity, lash out from time to time in acts of aggression, which eventually led to the deaths of two trainers\u2014Keltie Byrne and Dawn Brancheau\u2014as well as a young man who had snuck into the park at night.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey do not cope with being kept in these tanks. They survive to some degree, but they don\u2019t thrive to any degree,\u201d said\u00a0Ingrid Visser,\u00a0founder of the\u00a0Orca Research Trust<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey show stereotypical behaviors that are abnormal, repetitive behaviors like head bobbing, chewing on concrete, and self mutilation by banging the side of their heads on the side of the tank, and there isn\u2019t a single orca living in captivity where you cannot see one of these behaviors, and in many of them you see multiple examples of these behaviors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Haven\u2019t seen Blackfish yet? It\u2019s now steaming on Netflix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 ecowatch.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SeaWorld has faced intense criticism since the release of Blackfish, a documentary telling the story of orca whales kept in captivity at SeaWorld theme parks. Now court documents reveal that SeaWorld is pumping these marine animals full of psychotropic drugs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[170],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animal-rights-vegetarianism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41654"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41654\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}