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SeaWorld A Study into SeaWorld’s Ethical Dilemmas An Nguyen, Shane Hicks, Stephen Paterson April 15th, 2015 BUSI.3800-201

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The Company History of SeaWorld

SeaWorld opened it doors in 1964 near Mission Bay in San Diego, where it was first planned to be a underwater restaurant. However, it was eventually expanded into being a full “marine zoological park” with several marine exhibits. Starting with dolphin and sealion exhibits, the organization had about over 400,000 visitors per year. This success continued into 1965, when the fourth killer whale captured in the wild was showcased in the San Diego and led to the popular money making show for the sea-park. The killer whale would be known to everyone as Shamu, and became a cultural icon as well as the SeaWorld mascot.Eventually however, the first Shamu was pulled out of showings after a violent incident involving a person at the San Diego location. Several months after this, the whale became sick and had died of a sickness, though other whales have performed under the stage name of Shamu .As of right now, SeaWorld owns 29 killer whales, all performing under the Shamu alias. The current financial operations of the company are in some decline. Attendance as of August 2015 places about 6.5 Million visitors, though this has been after a steady decline of several years. Revenues were placed at around $391 million dollars at the same time, down 2% from the same period a year prior. Currently SeaWorld operates with three locations in San Diego, San Antonio and Orlando, and has plans to both expand its tanks in all of it’s locations and open a new location in the Middle East. Industry Overview Orcas first started to be captured in the mid 20th century, when, on November 17th, 1961, the orca that would be first captured was sighted near Newport Beach, California. After several attempts to capture the calf failed, the crew of the Geronimo managed to capture said whale. Two days later the whale had died while in captivity. The first killer whale to be successfully captured, Moby Doll, was captured off British Columbia in 1964, and died after 87 days of

captivity due to skin lesions caused by low salinity in the habitat. After that, Namu was captured off of Canada, and became the first orca exhibitioned for the public. He became a national sensation, inspiring a song and started paving the way for the cultural shift towards having killer whales seen as performers. However, Namu also had known times where he would have “loud, strident screams” while in his pen, with other whales often responding. Around this time was when Shamu was also captured, and, as mentioned previously, became an icon for SeaWorld. The two were even sharing a pen at one point. As time went on, some of the methods of capture became more extreme, and ultimately lead to the Penn Cove incident in August 1970. A violent incident while herding orcas into Penn Cove, Washington lead to several of them being killed in the process and others captured, with one of the captures being named Lolita. Bodies of the dead whales ended up being washed ashore, with their “bellies being split open and weighed down by steel chains”(PBS). Because of these events, public support eventually lead to the passing of the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act in 1972, which made the capture of marine mammals without a permit illegal. This ultimately led for captures to be committed outside of the US territory, mostly up north in Icelandic waters. This is where several other whales were captured, including several Shamu performers. The most famous of these particular captures is Keiko, who became the titular Willy in the Free Willy series of films. Also captured in Iceland is Tilikum, who became the focus of the film Blackfish, where public perception of how killer whales were treated became what it is today.

The Ethical Dilemmas A large part of the problems with SeaWorld’s approach can be indicated through the use

of the study of Tilikum, the killer whale who was a part of several violent incidents, and as such, most of this is relayed through the documentary Blackfish, first seen at Sundance in 2013. The documentary also expounds upon several other trainer incidents through anecdotes from former SeaWorld employees There was also several other instances involving how other whales, including the separation of whales, misinformation spread by employees. Tilikum was captured in 1983 in Icelandic waters after legislation prevented capturing whales in the Washington Area. He was first sent to Sealand of the Pacific, a water park in Victoria, British Columbia where he performed. While he was a popular attraction, he was The training program at the park, involving punishment by denying of food to all the whales when one was incorrect in execution, lead to infighting with Tilikum and other whales at the park, and the conditions of the keeping area were somewhat lacking, giving the whales a 20ft by 30ft deep cage to spend most of their time in. This ultimately led to the Keltie Byrne incident, where after slipping into the pool with all three of the park’s whales present, she was pulled under water where she drowned. Although investigations made into the case were inconclusive identifying who the instigator was, two witnesses at the area identified Tilikum as the whale in question. After this incident, the decision was made to shut down Sealand and sell it’s orcas. After selling Tilikum to SeaWorld he was moved in 1992 to the SeaWorld Orlando park, where he would help perform and act as a breeder. Tilikum was involved two other official incidents while being in SeaWorld. The first was a case where a homeless man, Daniel Dukes was found drowned in Tilikum’s pen naked and with several wounds after sneaking in to find a place to sleep. The Second case was the Dawn Brancheau situation, where trainer Dawn Brancheau, in the middle of a SeaWorld show, was pulled under by Tilikum and died, also suffering several other injuries. The first major dilemma brought up by these incidents is the way Tilikum and

other killer whales were handled by the executives of SeaWorld. As noted in the Blackfish documentary, the nature of Tilikum’s prior events were not fully made known to the trainers when it would’ve benefited them the most, and as a result, they did not treat him . There’s also the fact that Tilikum was also still being displayed, when it was known to the owners that he was in fact a dangerous animal. Both of these two things played a large part in how Tilikum ultimately became responsible for Dawn Brancheau’s death. It’s also important to point out that this is not a single isolated event. There are multiple examples of killer whales acting violently, including cases detailed in Blackfish such as Steve Aibel, Ken Peters and other trainers that have been in violent or dangerous incidents. According to other trainers who were a part of SeaWorld, they were by-and-large not informed of the other violent incidents. There’s also the issues brought about by SeaWorld issuing disingenuous statements. SeaWorld employees have been known to state facts about killer whales that are not true. Examples include stating that killer whales life-spans are around the 30 year range when the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration lists them of living either 50-100 years or 3060 years depending on the sex of the whale. SeaWorld employees also claim that the collapsed dorsal fin on male orcas are normal, when it’s actually a case of orca’s not having the proper swimming space that would allow for the dorsal fin to be propped up correctly. It is a huge ethical problem to misrepresent the facts to your benefit, as SeaWorld has done. Introduction to Issue needed to be addressed For the past several years, Seaworld has been faced when the ethical dilemma of the whales at their amusement park killing their trainers. Their issue is with the treatment of their killer whales leading to the death of trainers. The trainers involved were killed because they were in the same water as the killer whales. Eric Hoyt wrote an article about this matter on pbs.org.

Hoyt said “Bruce Stephens, former director of animal behavior for Sea World in San Diego and now a consultant to marine parks, says orcas have hurt him dozens of times but he still doesn't hesitate to jump into the water” (pbs.org). It is known that Sea World captured Tilikum from the ocean while it was still legal to capture whales from their natural habitat and then trained the killer whale to entertain people in their amusement parks from there on. It is the responsibility of SeaWorld to keep their trainers working in safe conditions to prevent any disasters from happening while maintaining healthy living conditions for their whales. What SeaWorld has done in response to the media attention of their ethical dilemma The documentary Blackfish addresses the issues SeaWorld is facing and SeaWorld has since released a statement saying the documentary is inaccurate. In the statement released by SeaWorld, they say that the documentary is inaccurate because it fails to show the pain felt by the SeaWorld co-workers of the worker who was killed by the killer whale. The killer whale that has been involved with three deaths of trainers who work at SeaWorld is named Tilikum, and continues to be kept at SeaWorld instead of being let free in the wild. Pat Saperstein wrote an article on the alleged inaccuracy of the documentary. Saperstein said “Tilikum continues to perform at SeaWorld Orlando” (variety.com). The journalists who write articles observing the ethical dilemma SeaWorld is going through believe that SeaWorld has a lot more to reveal to the public before being trusted by the public again. While there are a lot of people who refuse to trust that SeaWorld cares about its workers, SeaWorld still operates and still denies the claims from the documentary Blackfish. In the article on the SeaWorld Cares website, SeaWorld denies the accusations of taking killer whales from the wild and that SeaWorld hasn’t taken killer whales from the wild in over 35 years. The Steps SeaWorld has taken so far

With the bad reputation that the film Blackfish created for Seaworld in 2013, Seaworld was facing some serious issues. Seaworld tried to change the opinion of the public by creating newspaper ads that deny the accuracy of the film Blackfish. This effort didn’t work so well because they contradicted themselves in the context of their ad by admitting that they separate mother killer whales from calves on rare occasions after claiming that they don’t separate mothers from calves at all. In the process of all the publicity that was being developed, Seaworld responded to the public backlash. ● SeaWorld CEO Jim Atchinson stepped down in January 2015 Since the release of the Blackfish documentary, SeaWorld’s revenue has continued to decline due to the accusations of not treating the killer whales properly and the CEO at the time stepped down after serving as CEO since 2009. ● After years of pressure, Seaworld decided to stop breeding killer whales. After all the public backlash of the film Blackfish that came out several years ago, Seaworld finally decided to give up their fight of discontinuing their killer whale shows.

● After the death of Dawn Brancheau, SeaWorld removed their whale trainers from the same waters as the killer whales Once people found out that Dawn Brancheau had been brutally attacked during a show at SeaWorld, SeaWorld removed trainers from being in the same water as the killer whales. Dawn Brancheau was well trained to work with killer whales safely but died . Since the death of Dawn Brancheau, OSHA has been holding Seaworld accountable for making profit more important than their employees’ safety. Seaworld made several appeals but did not appeal the court ruling of keeping employees out of the water with the killer whales.

SeaWorld is facing a new challenge brought from a documentary, Blackfish. The main reason here is that the company doesn’t take responsible for what happened. According to Melissa Hargrove, he shared to The Dodo that he left SeaWorld because he felt insecure about his job. He felt like betraying because the company didn’t protect him. In addition, they negated in court that they had no knowledge about their trainers had a dangerous job. Hargrove watched his friends die for the passion of the company, and now SeaWorld didn’t want to take responsible for their lost. That is the reason why Hargrove spoke out to the public about how unethical SeaWorld was. He also shared that he couldn’t blame on these killer whales because these whales had to live in a bad condition. They got kidnapped from their family, and then they had to spend their whole life in a small place, thus that is really normal if they get a little psychotic (Melissa, 2015). Moreover, SeaWorld is trying to improve their policy and to deal with backlash from the movie from the animal rights activists to this day. Yet, SeaWorld’s social strategy reveals that they are drowning into the undercurrent of the anger of the public. However, the anger of the public is too much. According to twitter, Miri Jedikin tweeted that “Blackfish is on CNN right now in case you needed to be reminded why SeaWorld is just pure evil.” David holden also tweeted that “I’m going to say it. SeaWorld is pure evil. Please don’t go, please. Take your kids on a whale watching cruise anything.Not this.” According to Will Coldwell, a recent survey commissioned by Whale and Dolphin conservation found that there has been a 11% rise in the number of American opposed to the confinement of orcas in captivity. Tourist also shared that they would not visit SeaWorld while on overseas vacation. These evidences show that people no longer feel comfortable with the show at SeaWorld (Mollie, 2015) In 2014, SeaWorld Entertainment has announced its second quarter financial result that

seemed to be a disaster. The movie, Blackfish caused a massive financial losses for SeaWorld, which has seen its stock value decline dramatically. Revenue, attendance, and earnings all went the wrong way. According to CNN, the company reported disappointing earnings, its stock value shares plummeted by 33% in one day after Blackfish released. The movie has negative impacts on the company’s business, thus only 6.6 million people visited the park in 2014, and this number keeps decreasing every month. Therefore, to mend their damaged reputation since Blackfish released, SeaWorld has reportedly invested around $10 million in public relations campaigns; however, it is really difficult to appease the anger of the pub lic because the movie has a huge impact in that time (Natasha, 2015) In addition, SeaWorld is planning to building a new environment for the future of the company. According to Chief Executive Officer, Joel Manby, he said that people loved companies that have a purpose, so he wanted the company to focus on transforming SeaWorld into a company known for conservation and animal rescues. The reason is, people are interested in these animals being treated more humanely. Thus, the company spends $300 million dollars in a new project called “Blue world,” which will double the size of the tanks with a total water volume of 10 million gallons, offer better viewing experiences for audiences, and more natural spaces for the whales to live. These parks are already in the process of expanding its killer whale habitat in San Diego. In addition, SeaWorld plans to open Mako at SeaWorld Orlando soon, adds more roller coaster which will be the tallest, longest, and fastest ride in the U.S to compete with others such as Walt Disney and Universal (Sandra, 2015). In conclusion, SeaWorld should try to improve its policy that they need to treat their trainers and their animals better. SeaWorld also should try to focus on transforming SeaWorld into a company known for conservation and animal rescues because people love animals, and

they don’t want to see these poor animal mistreat unethically.

Work Cited 1, Melissa, Cronin. "'I Was Disgusted': How One Trainer Left The SeaWorld Horror Show." The Dodo. Melissa Cronin, 05 Mar. 2015. Web. 11 Apr. 2016. 2, Mollie, Ottenhoff. "How Not to Respond to Negative Social Backlash: Lessons from Sea World." The Spark Report, 30 Mar. 2015. Web. 11 Apr. 2016. 3, Natasha, Noman. "2 Years After 'Blackfish,' Here's How SeaWorld Is Doing." Mic. N.p., 20 Aug. 2015. Web. 11 Apr. 2016. 4,Sandra,

Pedicini.

"Struggling

SeaWorld

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Transformation."OrlandoSentinel.com. N.p., 9 Nov. 2015. Web. 11 Apr. 2016.

Plan

for

5, Kay, Jennifer, and Mike Schneider. "SeaWorld to Stop Breeding Orcas, Making Them Perform Tricks." Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, 17 Mar. 2016. Web. 15 Apr. 2016. 6, "Killer Whale (Orcinus Orca)." :: NOAA Fisheries. Web. 13 Apr. 2016. 7, “Blackfish.” Dir. Gabriela Coperthwaite. Magnolia Pictures, January 19, 2013. Film. 8, "History." SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment. Web. 15 Apr. 2016. 9. “Watch, Touch and Explore at SeaWorld”, The Evening Independent, 12 June 1973, Web. 2016 10. "The Marine Mammal Center." : Marine Mammal Protection Act. Web. 15 Apr. 2016. 11. "Stories of Captive Killer Whales." PBS. PBS. Web. 15 Apr. 2016. 12. Price, Erika Paker. "Since First Orca Capture, Views Have Changed." Snohomish County News. Web. 15 Apr. 2016. 13. Kuo, Vivian. "SeaWorld Appeal of OSHA Citations Denied." CNN. Cable News Network, 13 Apr. 2014. Web. 15 Apr. 2016. 14. “Dangers to Trainers”; Erich Hoyt; 1992; www.pbs.org. 15. ·“Seaworld: Killer Whale Doc ‘BlackFish’ is ‘Inaccurate’”; Pat Saperstein; June 18, 2013; www.variety.com. 16.“Why ‘Blackfish” is Propaganda, not a Documentary”; www.seaworldcares.com....