I’m an ambivalent fan of SeaWorld. I understand and appreciate animal rights activists’ concern over keeping gargantuan mammals in pens that are tiny when compared to their natural oceanic habitat.
I cringe when I think about walruses and dolphins trained to perform in ways that are meant more for amusement than enlightenment. And the thought of exploiting animals for the sake of making a buck (or millions of them) is sickening. But…
But to contend there is nothing redeeming about the water park is misleading.
Standing in front of a 10,000- pound killer whale, separated by inches-thick glass, a visitor to the park’s new Orca
Encounter show could be awed by the enormity of an animal that size moving effortlessly through the water and launching itself into the air the way an Olympic sprite leaps over a gymnasium floor.
Passengers aboard a whale watching vessel might have a vaguely similar experience with blue and gray whales migrating off the coast of California, but at SeaWorld it is the proximity to a massive, powerful and graceful presence that creates a life-changing connection, sort of like when a young football fan meets an NFL lineman trudging off the field after a game.
Gradually the idea that humans are the only lives of significance on this planet melts away. The notion that hundreds of these and similar beings exist unseen in a world that is a part of and different than ours sinks in the way a block of concrete sinks to the bottom of the ocean.
Fortunately SeaWorld’s newest “Shamu show” focuses more on education than entertainment and audiences who attend the park and watch the show will learn more about whales’ natural behavior and habitat rather than bearing witness to a play session between an animal and its trainer.
The new format is presumably and in part a reaction to the public relations disaster the national water park chain suffered after the release a few years ago of “Black Fish,” a film depicting the questionable ways in which trainers interacted with orcas and the issue of animals in captivity in general.
For decades SeaWorld executives have said some of the goals of their parks are to promote conservation and education. Their breeding and rehabilitation programs are testaments to that objective. And the new emphasis on teaching over entertaining is a step toward pursuing the second.
But maybe SeaWorld needs to add another element to its conservation presentation. They ought to consider a show in which garbage and pollutants created by humans and businesses are spilled into tanks of water shared by fish and humans. They should depict what happens when people and animals are met by the trash and contaminants that bring disease and death to both. It might not be a fun uplifting show for the family but it would be effective in conveying the message that SeaWorld has been promoting for some time — we are on a big, magnificent planet teeming with life.
We are responsible for it.
