rtotheizzo17 said:
That being said, if it wasn't for the SeaWorld marine parks the average person would probably never know Killer Whales existed. Look at the movie Orca. Thats how the world thought of these animals in the late 70's.
To be fair, Orca is a better representation of Killer Whales in the wild than Seaworld could EVER portray (except those instances where they let the whales NOM on the staff).
Oddly; I know more about Killer Whales than I do Seaworld - either way, Seaworld aren't doing a very good job
As for keeping them in captivity, I'm mixed a little. I don't have an issue with animals in captivity - conservation la de da.
However, Orcas are huge, massively intelligent and incredibly social animals. It really is the equivalent of you being put into a small glass cage either on your own, or with somebody you don't know and may not get on with. All this after being pulled away from all your family and friends. Imagine an alien abducting you at family Christmas and you're probably close to how it must feel to be taken(Gavin wishes that had happened last year though to be fair
).
At the very least, they need large space and to be integrated into pods as they would in nature (obviously matching transients with transients and residential types with residential types). That wouldn't work, because the enclosures would need to be the size of Seaworld (possibly, I don't know, I don't know much about Seaworld
) and nobody would pay to go and look at a huge expanse of water with the whales hiding away. You could send people out in boats I suppose, but it wouldn't take long for the Orca to work out how to get at the occupants
So it's a bad idea, but I think too late any currently in captivity. The absolute best thing they could do is to now breed any more (or capture) for captivity and to just educate people about them any way. "We stopped keeping Orcas because..."