My dream throughout my childhood had always been to grow up to be a veterinarian. I would beg my family every weekend to take me to the zoo, and from then on, I was spending most of my weekends observing animals. One weekend, everything changed. An elephant grabbed my attention because of the unhappy look on his face, looking at me right in the eyes, almost like a cry for help. This was my moment of realization. These animals were deprived from everything that was natural to them and this was affecting them negatively. Ever since that day, I never stepped foot in a zoo again because it was too sad and frustrating for me to see animals suffering and not being able to do anything about it. During my senior year in high school in marine biology, we began watching the documentary "Blackfish," which explored SeaWorld's cruel treatment of their captive. During the film, various classmates were in tears and some, including myself, had to step outside of class because the cruelty these animals were being put through was heartbreaking. Currently, there are 58 captive orcas in marine parks around the world. SeaWorld owns over half of the orcas, and after "Blackfish," the discussion over orca captivity has become prevalent in society and societal pressure has resulted in SeaWorld declaring they will no longer breed orcas in their parks. Although this was a big step in animal liberation, it does not make up for the damages SeaWorld, and other aquatic parks have done to the orca population. Marine parks should not keep orcas in captivity because it is detrimental to their physical and psychological health, their living space is inadequate for proper development, and keeping these animals in captivity does not provide education to the public. 

 Separation and lack of proper social interactions is a major factor to their poor psychological health. The article  "Killer Whales Don't Belong in Captivity  --  --  Here's Why" by Aisling Cronin, states that even after orcas develop into fully grown adults, both male and female orcas remain with their biological families for the rest of their lives (Cronin 1). They have lifelong bonds with their family members and even have specific dialects to communicate within their pods (orca families). Orcas are the only aquatic mammal to have been observed doing this in the wild, therefore illustrating their strong social bonds with their families. Separating them from their pods in the wild and placing them with unrelated orcas that they cannot socialize with results in stress and extreme loneliness for the mammals. Cronin says that doing this is the "Equivalent of forcing a group of human strangers who speak different languages and come from different cultural backgrounds into a small room, and informing them that they must now spend the rest of their lives together, whether they like it or not". Orcas are highly intelligent creatures who want and need to live in complex social groups, therefore taking them away from their families and relocating them to a concrete tank where they will spend the rest of their lives with orcas they cannot even communicate has a very negative effect on their emotional health. 

The living situation for orcas in captivity is unhealthy for both their physical and mental health. Orcas in the wild typically swim 100 miles a day, hunting and playing with their families, and they have the whole ocean to do so. In captivity, they have little space and cannot behave naturally or get the proper exercise to be healthy. Collapsed dorsal fins, which are a sign of poor health, are a result of orcas endlessly swimming in circles in the small tanks. Only one percent of orcas in the wild have been found with this condition, whereas in aquatic parks, all whales have their fins collapsed. Even though orcas cannot communicate properly with orcas of other pods that are brought into captivity, they are highly sociable, and don't like to be alone. In the article "Seeing is Believing," it is stated that, "Orcas don't normally sleep by themselves and that in the wild, they get close to their pod mates (Mom, Dad, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles and cousins), synchronize their breathing, keep moving, and still dive". In aquatic parks, they are isolated into their own separate pools to sleep, or to data collected for research since our society knows so little about these mammals. The emotional and physical stress they face daily weakens their immune system making them more prone to disease, which results in a shorter life span for the whales. Orcas in the wild live up to 60-100 years, whereas in captivity, they live only between 20 and 35 years. Even though they are kept in an environment free of predators and pollution, they still die young. 

Orcas aren't being taken out of the wild anymore; instead they are being bred in captivity through artificial insemination. This therefore never allows the mammals to use their natural instincts such as hunting, swimming freely in open water, or getting use to their intelligence to its fullest, since they are limited to space and have to perform for the audience . The industries are not looking out of their best interest (profit), so they breed the strongest whales no matter if they are related. Captive whale Katina whale, was impregnated by her own son Taku, in 2006 who was only 11 years of age. The average breeding age in the wild for orcas is 14 years of age, but since there is so much pressure for aquatic parks, they have disregarded the natural lifecycle of orcas and begin to breed them as early as eight and 10 years of age. The traumatic experience for the young mothers results in devastation and most babies are ultimately rejected by their mothers and/or separated from them anyway since they are meant to train for aquatic shows. As mentioned before, orcas have a lifelong bond with their families and mothers, who are especially protective over their young, so rejecting their own calves out of trauma illustrates captivity is ripping away their natural instincts of nurture for their own kind.  Separating them from their families, forcing them to live with orcas they can't even socialize with, and forcing them to continuously mate is resulting in unnatural behavior for the animals that has never been seen before in the wild. Captive orcas are becoming highly aggressive resulting in self-harm and the harming of other orcas and trainers.

The only recorded fatal attack from one orca to another happened while in captivity. Incompatibility is normal between orcas in the wild which sometimes results in small wounds and/or one orca needing space from a dominant individual. Even though aggressive encounters are rare for orcas in the wild, they do occur, but the chances of the encounter escalating to dangerous or even fatal are slim to none. In the wild, an orca can separate itself by simply swimming away from companions they are incompatible with and avoid them with space. Whereas captive orcas cannot escape or swim away from their aggressors since they are all enclosed in the same space. Captive orca groups are artificial and are made up of unrelated orcas whom might not necessarily get along in the wild, which is why it's oddly more beneficial for these highly sociable animals to be solitary than to be in a group of other whales who behave aggressively.

 Tilikum, the largest captive orca, was captured off the coast of Iceland in 1983, and was 2 years old when he was ripped away from his family. After his capture, he was kept in a small cement tank for nearly a year at Hafnarfjorour Marine Zoo as he awaited his transfer to the Sealand of the Pacific in British Columbia located in Canada. As a training technique at this marine park, food was taken away from him in order to train him for his performances that were ongoing all hours of the day, seven days a week.  On top of this, he was frequently attacked by his two other tankmate female orcas, Haida and Nootka.  When the park closed at night, the three incompatible orcas were crammed into a small metal module for more than 14 hours until the next morning. In 1991, Sealand trainer Keltie Byrne was pulled to the bottom of the pool by Tilikum and tossed around by the other three orcas which ultimately drowneded her to death. She was the first of three people to be killed because of Tilikum's stress, frustration, and confinement.After her death, Sealand was closed down for good, and Tilikum was purchased by SeaWorld, where he took the lives of the trainers Daniel Dukes in 1999 and Dawn Brancheau in 2010. Seven years previous to his first human kill, Tilikum swam freely in the ocean sided by his family before he was forced into a small tank with, "0.0001 percent of the quantity of water that he would traverse in a single day in nature" and forced to perform and live with abusive whales (SeaWorldofHurt). Tilikum is not the only captive orca that has become aggressive due to stress and their living conditions. SeaWorld has documented over 100 incidents where whales bit, pinned and swam aggressively towards trainers, many of which lead to serious injuries including near-death encounters. As mentioned previously, aggression toward humans and orcas is an extremely rare behavior for orcas in the wild, but the constant stress of living in incompatible social groupings inside small tanks caused them  to lash out, exposing danger to both other whales and employees at aquatic parks. 

Aggression isn't the only unnatural behavior that whales exhibit while in captivity due to stress and emotional suffering. After Dawn's death, Tilikum was kept in a small pool where he couldn't swim, communicate with other orcas, and not even communicate with humans. This animal was reported floating listlessly in the water for hours, which is a behavior that has never been seen before in the wild. This behavior has been reported in various orcas in aquatic parks, and even though orcas do rest, in the wild, they never stay still. While resting or sleeping, orcas often swim very slowly and sometimes even stop for a minute or two, but lifelessly floating for hours at a time is an unrecorded behavior in the wild. Orcas' large bodies were built for constant movement, which is why they swim up to 100 miles daily in the wild. This floating behavior could be a sign of depression, since some whales are more prone to floating than others, but either way, unnatural behavior is a good sign their psychological processing is being harmed due their extraction from their natural habitat. 

Death is fairly common for captive orcas. Out of the 130 orcas that have been captured, only 13 of them remain alive and considering their life expectancies, at least a third of these whales should still be alive today. The most common cause of death of captive orcas, captive-born and wild-caught, is infection such as pneumonia and septicemia. However, poor dental conditions and the exposing of their bodies during performances is also fatal. Infection mortality in captive orcas has been linked to immunosuppression, which is when the immune system debilitates and prevents infection and disease to its fullest potential. Wild orcas aren't exposed to constant stress and psychological depression, which causes immune system dysfunctions, therefore the infections that turn lethal to captive whales are successfully combated by whales in the wild because they have a healthy immune system (Rose, 5). The high death rates are also connected to poor dental health. Captive orcas show damaged, worn, and broken teeth due to chewing on their tank's steel gates due to boredom and aggression towards other whales in order to show dominance (Batt 1). Once their teeth are cracked, the pulp (the center of the tooth that is made up of living tissue) becomes exposed which leads to infection, which is the leading cause of death for captive orcas. To treat their broken teeth to prevent infection, a pulpotomy is performed, where vets and trainers use a drill to remove the soft pulp from the teeth and since they cannot perform a root canal on a captive orca. This painful procedure is anesthesia free, and it is performed routinely regardless of whether teeth are infected or in need of this procedure (The Orca Project). The teeth that have holes in them must be flushed and cleaned daily, which is done by filling the teeth with a Betadine solution, there is a high chance an infection will occur. In 2010, Kalina, the first born and raised in captivity at SeaWorld, died at age twenty days after having five of her teeth drilled and four others completely removed (The Orca Project). She had been the fourth orca to die at a SeaWorld park within 4 months that year. 

Teeth damage is one of the most tragic consequences for captive orcas, one because it leads to probable infection and death, and two because it renders the opportunities for the orcas to ever be released back in the wild. Another cause of death for these animals is a result of their constant floating on the surface of the pools. Whales suffer from severe sunburn from floating in the sun, and at least two orcas have died due to mosquito related diseases, which is unheard of in the wild because whales spend little to no time in the surface of the ocean.  

Peter Singer once said "We have to speak up on behalf of those who cannot speak for themselves", and it is time for someone to speak up for them.", which is why I am speaking for them now. Orcas are meant to be in the wild. They should not be separated from their families or from their natural habitat and placed to live in a tank to live for the rest of their lives. Our society considers these aquatic parks educational, which reveals how little we know from these mammals, and how torn our relationship with nature is. Captivity is negatively affecting orcas mentally and physically, they are dying an average of eighty years earlier, and they are conducting in unnatural behavior such as aggression and self harm. Taking orcas from their homes is hurtful for them as well as our society, because we are giving off the wrong perception that nature doesn't have to be respected, and that the premature deaths of these whales are acceptable. 

