A newspaper exposé has led to an investigation by Ontario's Environment Ministry into four mass animal graves at the province's Marineland theme park. According to a former park employee, the graves contain the bodies of more than 1,000 animals, including orcas, dolphins, seals, walruses, bears, bison, and deer.

Former marine-mammal trainer Phil Demers described one particularly gruesome incident to a reporter from the Toronto Star. After an orca named Kandu died in December 2005, he was buried on the park's grounds. But staffers failed to obtain brain tissue samples during the whale's necropsy, so Demers and another trainer were assigned the macabre task of exhuming Kandu's body two weeks later.

"He was not frozen and it smelled so bad and there was blood all over the place," says Demers. "I was elbow deep in the pit in a reddish orangey sludge and we both kept coming up to vomit. It was gross."

Graveyard of Niagara Falls

The graves may be illegal, since Ontario requires waste permits to dispose of animal corpses and the park apparently had no such permits. Government officials are also concerned about possible contamination of the water and soil, especially because of the graves' close proximity to the Welland River, which feeds nearby Niagara Falls.

PETA has been campaigning against Marineland for years, citing the park's abysmal conditions and the high mortality rate among young whales and dolphins. The park also has a long history of obtaining wild-caught beluga whales, dolphins, and orcas, including Keiko, aka "Willy" from the movie Free Willy, whom Marineland sold to an even more depressing park in Mexico, where he languished for years before being rescued and rehabilitated. This summer, Demers and seven other former trainers came forward to report numerous instances of neglect and abuse, including serious damage to animals' skin and eyes because of filthy, tainted water.

Alarmingly, Ontario is Canada's only province that does not regulate the keeping and displaying of exotic animals or conduct public-safety inspections. Parks like Marineland are allowed to "police" themselves, and Marineland's mass graves are silent testimony to how good—or bad—of a job it's doing.

You Can Help

Refuse to patronize any marine park, including SeaWorld, which also has a tragic track record. Please voice your objections about the lack of adequate captive-animal protection laws in Ontario to Premier Dalton McGuinty:

The Honourable Dalton McGuinty

Premier of Ontario
Rm. 281, Main Legislative Bldg., Queen's Park
Toronto, Ontario M7A 1A4
416-325-7578 (fax)

Lea Michele is always helping animals win, and now it's Lea who's scooping up a trophy. At VH1's Do Something Awards, lovely Lea accepted the Do Something Award in the "TV Star: Female" category for her work with PETA and used her acceptance speech to remind the audience not to ride in cruel horse-drawn carriages. 

Over on NBC, America's Got Talent judge Howard Stern used his critique of a performer with a cockatoo to speak up for birds used for food. "I recently stopped eating turkey and chicken and all birds and now I know why," he said. "They seem to have some sort of intelligence and I don't want to wreck their lives, so I'm not eating them anymore. I'm not, like, a bird vampire."

The singer who recorded the jingle for Marineland is now raising her voice against the notorious animal abuser. After eight former trainers publicly revealed that the park forced animals to swim in water so filthy that it blinded them and caused pieces of their skin to fall off, Suzie McNeil is trying to have her voice removed from Marineland's commercials and is encouraging people not to go to the park.

Lady Gaga found herself the target of massive backlash from fans, animal advocates, and fellow celebrities when she reneged on her vow not to wear fur and draped herself in the skins of foxes and rabbits. Russell Simmons wrote Lady Gaga a letter asking her to reconsider her support of the fur industry: 

Olivia Munn, who starred in an anti-fur ad for PETA, tweeted, "When u see FUR, an animal was TORTURED for it. Watch this video & tell me if you think it's 'art'." As Olivia's fur-farm exposé makes clear, there is nothing artistic about skinning animals alive.

A host of other celebrities used their tweets to be sweet to animals:

To keep up with what your favorite celebrities are doing for animals, follow @PETA on Twitter. 

Eight trainers at Marineland in Niagara Falls, Ontario, have handed in their resignations and are speaking out to the Toronto Star about the cruel and abusive conditions at the marine animal prison, which PETA has been after for years.

Because they were made to sign nondisclosure agreements about what goes on behind the scenes at the park, many of the trainers asked not to be identified by name. But former trainer Phil Demers, who quit the park after 12 years, gave a daring on-camera interview describing the abuse he witnessed:

(Video courtesy of thestar.com)

PETA has had our sights on Marineland for some time, writing letters to Canadian officials and asking them to take action to improve conditions at the park.

Now, Marineland owner John Holer's own trainers are accusing the park of cruelty to animals, including the following:

• Because of insufficient staff, a sick walrus named Zeus often lies unattended in his own excrement.
• The park's highly social lone orca, Kiska, has had no contact with any other orcas since another orca on loan for breeding was shipped back to SeaWorld, and four others have died prematurely at the park since 2004 alone.
• A sea lion named Baker circles in mindless laps, rubbing against the side of the tank to scratch his itchy, irritated skin, which is missing patches of fur because of the bacteria- and chemical-laden water. He also lost his left eye lens as a result of severe irritation caused by the water.
• Many of the animals keep their red, swollen eyes squeezed shut against the damaging effects of the filthy water.
• Five dolphins had their skin fall off in chunks after they spent months swimming in water so green they could barely be seen in it.
• Six of the park's seven seals are blind, have impaired vision, or have other serious eye problems because of the unsanitary water.

When questioned about the insufficient staff, dirty water, and untimely death of a baby beluga, Marineland owner John Holer offered this chilling answer: "[F]or people and all living things, there is a time to live and a time to die."

Perhaps his cavalier attitude explains the more than 40 whale and dolphin deaths at Marineland since the park's inception. The park, along with fellow marine animal prison SeaWorld, earned a spot on PETA's list of deadly destinations, a register of places that anyone who cares about animals should avoid like the plague.

Please voice your objections about the lack of adequate laws to protect captive animals to Premier Dalton McGuinty:

The Honourable Dalton McGuinty

Premier of Ontario
Rm. 281, Main Legislative Building, Queen’s Park
Toronto, Ontario M7A 1A4
416-325-7578 (fax)