THE KILLER WHALE
C O N T ROV E R S Y
By S a r a h S m i t h
“These animals love to see us every day, they are
bright eyed and bushy-tailed. I couldn’t imagine working
around animals if they were suffering,” said former
SeaWorld trainer Mark Simmons told me recently.
Simmons has worked with 22 different killer whales on
a day-to-day basis.
But Seaworld critic Vanessa Williams of the Whale
and Dolphin Conservation Society said that “Orcas are
the largest animals to be kept in captivity anywhere in
the world. Their sheer physical size, large home range
and complex social behavior make them inherently
unsuited to a life in captivity.” In 1964, the first killer
whale went on public display. Today 55 of them perform
or live in animal parks worldwide. SeaWorld experts
and other scientists are now studying the behavior of
wild and captive killer whales in order to answer the
question: are the captives depressed?
Critics of SeaWorld and other operators are asking
state legislators to outlaw the capture and breeding of
orcas for entertainment purposes. After the release of a
documentary, “Blackfish”, environmental groups such
as PETA and petitions -- one had 24,566 signatures -urged legislative action, and the strongest support seems
to be in California.
Each community or family of orcas has a specific set
of behaviors, unique to each pod, which is defined as a
school or group of marine mammals such as dolphins,
whales, or seals. Each pod has a complete repertoire of
vocalizations and a distinct manner of communicating
with each other.
Orcas usually travel in pods of 5-25 members and
are usually related by blood and stay together for life.
Often times, they may travel up to 160 km in a day,
wrote Vanessa Williams. Lori Marino has written
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that that cetaceans such as whales and dolphins have
similar patterns of social ecology that involve complex
social organizations. Killer whales often babysit each
other’s offspring so that more of them can hunt, wrote
Marino in a scientific study. “Killer whales often hunt
cooperatively, using their larger numbers to more
efficiently chase and corner prey, said Marino.
Wild females have an average lifespan of about 50
years and wild males an average lifespan of 30 years,
although some individual orcas have been known
to double these averages. Whales in captivity often
die before or in their early 20’s, the marine mammal
biologist Naomi Rose has written in a research report.
A United States Marine Mammal Inventory report
found that the annual mortality rate was two and a half
times higher for killer whales in captivity compared to
those in the wild in both 1992 and 2005. This information
was reexamined in 2010 and despite the improvements
in animal husbandry and the captive environment, there
was no change in the difference in the annual mortality
rate between wild and captive populations.
The most common reasons for death among captive
orcas are pneumonia, septicemia, and other infections,
Rose wrote. One possible cause for these illnesses is
immunosuppression, or the decreasing effectiveness
of the immune system due to depression, stress, or
boredom, she said. Many whales in captivity often have
broken teeth or poor dental health. This can lead to
exposed pulp in the whale’s mouths and can increase
the vulnerability to infection.
These sores, worn teeth, and broken teeth come
from when the killer whales gnaw on the steel or
concrete materials in their enclosures, said Rose. Many
wild orcas do not suffer from the same dental and health
problems, Rose wrote. But Simmons told me “They are
absolutely not suffering” during the interview. “Killer
whales are top predators, and are designed to adapt to
any environment,” he said.
Researchers Kathleen N. Morgan and Chris T.
Tromborg have written that constant stressors, which are
anything that could prevent animals from maintaining
normal physical and behavioral health and stability,
can cause increased abnormal behavior. One example
of such is that some killer whales may attempt to hurt
themselves by running into the concre H