Blackfish? Bullshit!

This in response to several posts regarding the cessation of Orca breeding at Sea World, citing "Blackfish" as if it were actually a documentary. 

Calling Blackfish a "Documentary" is almost like calling "Avatar" by the same name. If this were truly a valid documentary, one has to wonder why the Academy completely ignored it as such the year it was eligible!  First and foremost, what the movie makers did was to draw a conclusion and back fit the movie to support it, you know, like Creationists? The commentary within the movie was primarily from (and again no mention of this) disgruntled (as in terminated and pissed) employees. I don't want an argument here, because the varying opinions are never going to coincide, but our daughter,  has been at Sea World for 30 years, and knew Dawn Brancheau (the dead trainer) well. I coached the Sea World Ladies softball team some years ago. A number of my players worked with Orcas, so I put great value on their opinions vice a fired and angry ex-employee. To a person, they felt that the Orcas enjoyed the social interaction with humans and, more importantly having been born in captivity could really only exist in and were content that setting. They all believed they had the best job in the world. My response to those who would say they (Orcas) are not happy (never having worked with them) would be to ask "How do you know?" 

RE: the death of Dawn Brancheau, If there was a mistake made it was that Sea World allowed Tilikum, a wild caught, and in his early years of captivity, abused, Orca to be in the tank with people. He had already demonstrated that he was quite different from the captive borns prior to being bought by Seaworld, but as he was a fertile guy, they brought him to the Orlando park where he has sired a number of calfs, two of whose births it has been my privilege to witness firsthand. He was simply not as stable all the time as he was most of the time. 

      Tilikum is very ill now, and, at 35 is at what is usually the end of life span for a wild Orca, which refutes one of the many falsehoods/half truths in Blackfish. He was caught off Iceland and kept in a tiny tank, followed by finally being transferred to the rundown Sealand of the Pacific in British Columbia, Canada, and forced to call his barren 100-foot-by-50-foot pool—just 35 feet deep—his new “home.”

     Food was withheld from him as a training technique, and he regularly endured painful attacks by two dominant female orcas, Haida and Nootka. He was forced to perform every hour on the hour, eight times a day, seven days a week. The constant stress and exhaustion gave him stomach ulcers. When the park closed its doors at the end of each day, the three incompatible orcas were crammed into a tiny round metal-sided module for more than 14 hours until the park reopened the next morning.

           This treatment is completely at odds with Sea World practices. I can't help wonder why the people who are so concerned about an intelligent sea animal are not more concerned about captive Gorillas and Orangs or even Beluga whales and dolphins. maybe one of them should kill a trainer? Factually, Tilikum's story is akin to that of an abused child who grows up to be a social misfit and violent offender. perhaps the real tragedy is in not treating him as such, but rather counting too much on the rehabilitative power of affection across the human/ Orca boundary. There simply was not and never has been "abuse" of Orcas at Sea world except in the minds of those who would define it as their agenda dictates.