Killer whale (orca) belongs to the dolphin family and is of order cetacea. People generally assume that whales and dolphins are two different kinds of animals, but they are not and every member in the dolphin family is a kind of whale (Lunis). Cetacea order is comprising of dolphins, porpoises, and whales and the largest member of this dolphin family is known as orca or killer whale. The issue of killer whales living in marine parks and trainer deaths has exploded in the public sphere since 2013, when the documentary Blackfish was released. The documentary revealed facts about what is really happening inside the parks and the rigid way that orcas are being treated by the trainers who worked there. At Sea World in California, killer whales have been housed in large saltwater pools (Nielsen). SeaWorld should not capture killer whales (orcas) anymore because of deficiencies in American’s national legal protection for orcas in captivity, inability to keep the orcas in captivity due to their physical and psychological characteristics, and lastly the incapacity on the behalf of SeaWorld to add on any contributions to the understanding of the main threats (overfishing, pollution, and climate change) wild orcas’ face.   

When the documentary Blackfish was released, there was a backlash which the public display industry had to face. Tweets supporting Blackfish and criticizing SeaWorld came from all angles. For instance, actress/singer Ariana Grande, having 16.5 million followers; PETA, with 500,000 followers; and of course, the general public, all shared their concern towards saving orcas. Killer whale is one of the world's most intense predators. They devour marine warm-blooded animals, for example, seals, ocean lions, and even whales, utilizing their teeth that can be four inches in length. They are known to grab seals right off the ice. Orcas are apex predators, at the highest point of the natural way of life. No other creatures (with the exception of humans) can hunt orcas. Killer whales feed on ocean winged animals, squid, octopuses, ocean turtles, sharks, beams and fish. Captures of wild orcas for the captive media outlet has had an everlasting effect on the target population. The size and social structure of the Southern inhabitant populace has still not recouped following their catches in the 1960 to the 1970s. With an expanding consciousness, welfare of killer whales has seriously taken a backseat. It is evident from the way they are captured and imprisoned. It is quite shocking to observe that, despite the world knowing the consequences of keeping orcas in captivity, they are still being taken from the wild from their natural habitat.

The most recent years have showed a totally new level of discernment encompassing the treatment of creatures and the law's part in controlling their care. The Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) was passed in 1972 with the reason for actualizing managerial principles to save and secure amphibian warm blooded creatures and their part in the marine ecosystem. Although the MMPA implies to guarantee marine environment steadiness by ordering a discontinuance on taking or bringing in marine vertebrates, it has turned out to be progressively evident that the Act is loaded with detrimental gaps and flaws. The MMPA gives the public display industry extremely broad control over these standards, which makes it very unlikely that any necessary tightening of the regulations will be possible in the future (Wise). One of the biggest loopholes in the MMPA is the businesses' control of the standards. This is a loophole because there is no governmental check upon such businesses as to whether they are conforming to the prescribed legal standards or not. Public show offices need to maintain uncollected and unapproved "professionally perceived norms" for instruction or preservation programs, which expect them to totally self-regulate (Wise). 

Per the public display industry’s “professionally recognized standards,” public display industry has an unrestricted and expansive control. The instructive and conservational programs require that all organizations have a mission articulation including instruction, a composed training design, and organized training programs coordinated by an expert with instructive programming training. Permit-holding open show offices' training programs must offer "various levels of learning openings, which incorporate propelled training programming for all ages, and in addition educator training." The data that these show offices present to the overall population about marine natural life preservation, the creatures, and their biological communities should likewise be founded on the "best current logical knowledge." Since the government does not verify information provided to the public by this industry, it is astonishing that such a high degree of control has been vested in the hands of the industry which tends to manipulate rules about its power. There is hardly any supervision seen on behalf of the government in order to ensure that the measures are sufficiently met. The regulating agency has absolutely no prescribed process or even the intention to create a process for any form of evaluation of these public display industries as to whether they are meeting the requisite professional standards or not. 

Furthermore, the isolated administrative obligations among the different actualizing organizations add to the deficiencies of the MMPA. Under the Department of Commerce, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) secures whales, dolphins, porpoises, seals, and ocean lions. Under the Department of the Interior, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) maintains supervisory authority over walruses, manatees, dugongs, sea otters, and polar bears. There is a necessary requirement that facilities have to submit their records to NMFS through which the true statistics could be formulated. The inventories reveal the existence of disturbing deaths, high mortality rates and low birth rates. The reason for this has been that the killer whales (orcas) have not been able to adapt well to the captivity. The results were much expected because when mammals would be forced out of their natural habitat by such public display industries, then they will not be able to adapt to the changed environment. 

At the same time, it is a crucial fact to note that the killer whale (orca) is the largest predator of the dolphin family to date. The quantity of food required for this mammal in order to sustain its life is much more than other mammals. According to John Hargrove, who quit SeaWorld in 2012 after a whale attack where he suffered numerous broken bones and almost destroyed his sinuses (Adler). Hargrove states that the whales live in unnatural social groups, are bored and restless, are forced to perform tricks for food that trainers withheld as punishment, and occasionally slipped, he writes, “into the dark side,” which means into attacking the trainers. In addition, Hargrove points out that SeaWorld was not starving the whales, but food withholding was used as a motivator to keep orcas hungry enough to want to perform in shows for fish rewards, and it is known among trainers as “working weight” (Batt). The profit seeking industries have little interest in the welfare of the killer whales and are more interested in earning their share of profits. Since the regulating authorities are latent enough to keep a check on the working, this industry takes advantage and do not provide these whales the requisite food intake (Wise). It is therefore stated that the MMPA has complete ambiguity in legislating the rules. The situation has turned from bad to worse due to the inadequate division in authority and the lack of supervision in MMPA. This has led the marine parks (public display industry) to take advantage of the laws and legislating their rules which enables them to hold and hunt the orcas on the first place.

The power abuse in the public display industry is particularly harmful in the context of captive orcas because of the physical and psychological characteristics of orcas and their inability to afford living in captivity. The physical characteristics of orcas simply corroborate to their feature of being gigantic in size and the psychological characteristics pinpoint their nature of being a ferocious predator. Their nature also includes eating by killing others, i.e., by killing living animals. However, at SeaWorld, orcas are provided with dead meat which goes against their killing nature. Because the orcas are unable to hunt naturally in this environment, they lash out at humans (Anderson). According to the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission, a 2008 marine mammal survey conducted "found that more than half of marine mammal workers have been injured by the animals that they work and train. Over one-third of these injuries are classified as “severe”, which include deep wounds, fractures, or lacerations that require stitches. The trainers and staff who are in contact with captive marine mammals for more than fifty days per year are several times more likely to endure traumatic injuries from the animals" (wise).

In an anguishing episode of Blackfish, a SeaWorld orca drags a senior coach more than once to the base of the pool by the foot, toying with him as it may do with a seal. The 40-year-old coach was executed by Tilikum in February 2010 in the wake of being maneuvered into the water. He ripped off her arm at the elbow, scalped her and separated her spine. Tilikum is still alive and living at SeaWorld however who – knowing any of this – would need to see him perform? It is most likely true that the recreation center's coaches love and watch over the creatures in their charge, yet the entire set-up is sickening. SeaWorld is entirely wrong in keeping the orcas in bondage, where individuals can be in danger by them. It must be an influencing factor to think about the threats which have been overlooked. Assuming this is the case, it's simply one more bit of proof of our human childishness that still these creatures are kept for show off business and for photography purposes (Lewis).  

In addition to cost to human life, the captive killer whales also suffer from many various conditions. Hillary Wise, a journalist and advocate for captive whales, found that these whales suffer “diseases, mental instability, and causes of death that are not found in wild populations. These conditions include high levels of stress, fungal bacterial pneumonia, bleeding ulcers, myocardial fibrosis, heart failure, chronic colitis, agranulocytosis, pseudomonas, and shortened life spans” (wise). The last killer whale born in captivity at SeaWorld has recently died at a San Antonio park. Kyara, the orca born in April to her mom Takara, was being treated by veterinarians for an infection but her health declined as stated by the officials of SeaWorld. It has been time and again stated that the aquatic animals are prone to fall sick if they are removed from their natural habitat. Their psychological and physical characteristics make them unfit to live in an artificial environment. In this case also, a similar thing happened. Kyara had faced some very serious and progressing health issues relating to pneumonia. The problem had aggravated so much that the animal care and veterinary teams had been aggressively treating and gauging a way out. SeaWorld had also announced last year that it would stop breeding killer whales and end its killer whale shows following years of controversy over the way the company treats the animals; however, nothing has been done to date (Gajanan). Even though SeaWorld announced that it would stop breeding killer whales, the death of Kyara shows that the harm from breeding was still affecting whales.

Orcas are those creatures who have highly emotional and enthusiastic lives. Dolphins and whales have a feeling of social bonding which is on another level. This level is much more intricate than other different creatures, including humans. In the wild, killer whales live in matriarchal social orders where males are kept at the edge. Killer whales are not able to cope with the psychological and physical changes which occur due to the changes in their surroundings. For instance, at SeaWorld, Tilikum was at the base of the orca social structure and was being dominated by other female whales. Many-a-times, rakes were also identified on his entire body. Holding these marine warm-blooded animals in captivity is not only dangerous for them, but also to the people with whom these creatures interact with (Wise). Keeping them in unnatural environments leads them to become sickly and lash out at trainers as well. Therefore, orcas must return to their natural habitat. As a result, these creatures will be safe because their own physical and psychological needs will be satisfied by their environment.

Killer whales (orcas) can best be protected when they are in their natural habitat. Taking an example of the human-made zoos, animals such as lions and tigers are carnivores and have the nature of killing the weaker species in order to sustain in their own life. This is how they are born and if they are confined and kept into captivity then slowly and slowly they will turn into endangered species and finally be extinct. The same situation applies to that of killer whales. They are also possessing the nature of killing the weaker and smaller species and eating them as food in order to live further. So, when the news comes of the fact that killer whales have been responsible for killing two to three humans (trainers), one cannot blame these aquatic species. For example, the male orca, Tilikum has been into captivity from the very inception of his life and has been held responsible for the deaths of two trainers of the SeaWorld (Kirby). Killer Whales as the name suggests, are dangerous and are of the nature of killing for their own needs. Humans cannot possibly claim a mammal’s nature to be the problem. Killer Whale’s aggressive behavior towards humans is natural and bound to exist. 

Captivating orcas who suffer from aggressive behavior toward humans is not worthwhile, because SeaWorld has itself done little to contribute to our understanding of main threats to wild Orcas (overfishing, pollution, and climate change). In a reaction to the documentary Blackfish, SeaWorld has presented a complete press release in order to counter the claims made in the documentary. SeaWorld primarily holds the argument that its possession of the killer whales does nothing but helps science to move further on their research. According to the SeaWorld, keeping killer whales (orcas) in artificial captivity provides an extraordinary possibility to do important studies. Even if SeaWorld were to use their research on captive whales to try and help wild whales, the environments that these whales are raised in are too different to assume that the findings will be helpful for wild whales. SeaWorld argues that it is not possible to replicate the research if these mammals are left in the wild. The stance propounded by SeaWorld comes out to be a mere fabrication to save one’s business and nothing of such sort happens. In fact, even if SeaWorld would not have been into existence, it does not mean that the human would not have been able to gauge or research on these species. SeaWorld hasn’t contributed much to our understanding of the main threats to wild orcas: overfishing, pollution, and climate change. 

Even though SeaWorld has tried to expand synthetic insemination which is the use of cryopreserved whale sperm, researchers factor out that captive orcas ought to be trained to donate or accept sperm; no one ever attempted to impregnate a wild whale. The research has not provided any solution to help the wild orcas' threats, instead, providing a new way to reproduce killer whales in captivity. Despite their 24/7 access to killer whales, SeaWorld-affiliated researchers have published very little orca research. Out of the four-dozen papers co-authored with the aid of SeaWorld-sponsored researchers none centered on orcas. All papers co-authored via SeaWorld-backed researchers over the past forty years are not specific to captive orcas and most of these papers had been posted before 1990 (Gajanan). Additionally, SeaWorld pledged to spend extra $10 million on orcas’ studies after releasing the documentary Blackfish, these funds were supposed to aim on studying killer whales and researching on them by doing a complete analysis in which the SeaWorld has failed miserably and has not added anything new with its studies (Raja). The amount which has been pledged by the park does no good because research has not been substantive. Therefore, even if such hefty amount has been spent, it has not contributed or added in the already existing research. SeaWorld has proved by their published research that their priorities are how to provide data to support keeping orcas in captivity rather contributing to the understanding of the main threats (overfishing, pollution, and climate change) wild orcas’ face.

All in all, more and more animals are classified as endangered every day. Fifty years ago, orcas were living without any serious threats, but humans have become a major threat for them, thus leading them to be classified as an endangered animal. Therefore, each individual has a duty to protect these mammals and to save the ecosystem. At the same time, it is an accepted fact that along with killer whales, humans can also not be put at risk in order to save some other species. It is because of these reasons that it can be rightly said that killer whales belong to their natural habitat. By keeping them in their natural environment, killer whales (orcas) would not have to be tamed and would remain to be of their natural instinct, and also the trainers who are at risk because of such dangerous species would also be relieved from such danger. Due to frequent deaths for both trainers and whales in SeaWorld, it is time that the truth must come out to the general public so that they can decide if they want to contribute to the destruction of an aquatic life form and its ecosystem.
