When SeaWorld decided to offer up 20 million shares of common stock in an initial public offering, no one expected PETA to be one of the first in line to buy.

But Wall Street was in for a surprise. We quickly purchased the smallest number of shares necessary to give us the right to attend and speak at annual meetings and to submit shareholder resolutions asking for policy changes. Our first order of business as part owners of SeaWorld? Getting the orcas out—including Corky, who has been enslaved by SeaWorld for 44 years.  

iStockphoto.com/DaveRig

We will educate stockholders about how marine parks tear orcas and dolphins away from their homes and families and imprison them in minuscule concrete tanks, where they suffer from captivity-induced stress and illness. 

And of course meanwhile, PETA and our supporters will continue trying to win freedom for orcas and dolphins as soon as possible by telling everyone that these animals live in a SeaWorldofHurt. 

Does this sound like déjà vu to you? A weekend visitor to SeaWorld in San Antonio has sent PETA disturbing photographs of a dolphin who appears to be missing a chunk of flesh from his or her lower mandible. The injury is strikingly similar to the one sustained by an orca named Nakai at the San Diego SeaWorld just a few months ago. Just as we did for  Nakai, PETA has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and requested an investigation into the cause of the dolphin's injury. 

In Nakai's case, the USDA listed the orca's injury as being caused by a recessed track that holds gates that separate two of the tanks. Another injury to another animal, also caused by SeaWorld's dangerous enclosures, would demonstrate a clear violation of the Animal Welfare Act, which states that facilities must be structurally sound and free from objects, projections, or edges that may cause injury and that all animals must be handled in a manner that does not cause physical harm. 

But even without injurious enclosures, SeaWorld still harms marine mammals by robbing them of everything that is natural, pleasant, and important to them, such as living in family pods and swimming up to 100 miles a day in the open ocean. 

And SeaWorld sentences animals to an early grave: Orcas, for instance, can expect to live an average of 30 to 50 years in the wild, and some live as long as 90 years. The median age for orcas in captivity is only 9 years. The debilitating stress of captivity weakens the animals' immune systems. In fact, some other weekend visitors to SeaWorld San Antonio reportedly told employees about a shark who was lying belly-up in a tank and appeared to be dead.

SeaWorld: Dangerous for human beings and deadly for marine animals.

Update:

After visiting SeaWorld and taking photographs of Nakai's injury (two of which are shown below), Dr. Ingrid N. Visser, founder and principal scientist of the Orca Research Trust, found that there are "puncture marks that match orca teeth spacing," which "is a clear indication that an altercation between the orcas was involved." The puncture marks in question can be seen at the bottom right of the wound in the first photo below:

©Ingrid N. Visser, Ph.D.

©Ingrid N. Visser, Ph.D.

This evidence strongly suggests that Nakai's wound was indeed caused by a bite resulting from incompatible confinement rather than contacting with the side of the pool, as SeaWorld has alleged.

Originally posted September 28:

Following a serious and gruesome injury to an orca in an avoidable attack, PETA has submitted a complaint asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to take disciplinary action against SeaWorld for housing orcas incompatibly in violation of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA).

As you can see in these disturbing photographs, Nakai, an 11-year-old male orca at SeaWorld in San Diego, sustained a laceration so significant that, as a whistleblower said, "a dinner plate-sized chunk of his lower mandible [has been] sheared off, exposing underlying tissues, and bone." The flesh cut from him "was big enough and intact enough for SeaWorld to retrieve it from the bottom of the pool."

According to the whistleblower's report to journalist Tim Zimmermann, Nakai's injury was a result of "a major altercation" between Nakai and two other orcas, Keet and Ikaika. The AWA makes it clear that "marine mammals that are not compatible must not be housed in the same enclosure." Yet SeaWorld parks have a long history of housing incompatible orcas from widely divergent groups together in enclosures—and the result has been stress, agitation, aggressive and bloody raking, serious injury, and death.

What You Can Do

It's clear that SeaWorld can't be trusted to make the safety and well-being of marine animals its top priority. Please don't ever visit SeaWorld (or any other marine-mammal park)—and tell company executives why you won't support the abuse of Nakai and the other intelligent, complex animals they've imprisoned and enslaved.

While most of us are grilling veggie dogs in the park or sipping drinks by the pool today, working animals won't have it so easy:

Horses pulling horse-drawn carriages today will tromp on hard pavement all day long in the intense heat. They will breathe exhaust fumes and will not have adequate food or water. Tonight, they will be crammed into a tiny stall for a few hours until they are dragged out in the morning to start again.

Hens used by the egg industry are spending the day crammed five deep into wire "battery cages" about the size of a file drawer. Because they are packed so closely together, they will have to urinate and defecate on each other.

Today, Indian donkeys will struggle to pull heavy carts that are overloaded with bricks and sugarcane. They will toil under the blazing sun with little rest, food, or water. They may be beaten or whipped to force them to keep going.

iStockphoto.com/Rpsycho

Orcas who are enslaved at marine parks today will perform meaningless tricks in front of crowds of screaming people in order to get food. They will swim endless circles in a tank that is, for them, comparable to a bathtub. The reverberations from their sonar will bounce off the walls, adding to their frustration and anger.

Female dogs in puppy mills will likely spend Labor Day in either a crude, filthy cage or chained to a tree. They will suffer from painful medical conditions, such as ear infections, mange, and abscessed feet, for which they will receive no veterinary care. They will either be pregnant with or nursing yet another litter of puppies, who will be taken away from them and sold.

Pregnant cows on dairy farms will be hooked up to milking machines several times today. They may be suffering from a painful udder inflammation called "mastitis," likely brought on by the drugs that increase their milk production. They may also be lame from being intensely confined and being forced to stand amid their own waste.

This Labor Day, resolve to help the animals who rarely have a day off. To learn what the PETA-supported working animal relief organization Animal Rahat is doing to help animals in India, visit AnimalRahat.com. 

There's big news today in a case that PETA has been tenaciously pursuing for some time: Consistent with the citations issued against SeaWorld in 2010, Administrative Law Judge Ken Welsch of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC) found that SeaWorld is culpable for allowing its employees to interact directly with potentially dangerous orcas.

Olivier Bruchez|cc by 2.0

SeaWorld Knew the Risks

For years, PETA has implored SeaWorld to transfer the marine mammals it enslaves to transitional coastal sanctuaries because confining animals of such great size to severely inadequate tanks leads to miserable lives of desperation and frustration—and dangerous conditions for SeaWorld staffers.

After one orca, Tilikum, killed trainer Dawn Brancheau in front of horrified visitors at SeaWorld Orlando, PETA urged the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to pursue a citation against SeaWorld and provided it with compiled research on the history of deaths and injuries at the park and orca aggression in captivity. Today's OSHRC decision affirms that SeaWorld knew that allowing its employees to interact directly with orcas such as Tilikum could have serious or fatal results.

A History of Irresponsibility

While the judge modified the citation for "willful" violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Act to "serious," adjusting the fine accordingly, he found that SeaWorld knew that there was a "substantial probability that death or serious physical harm could result" from these interactions, yet it continued to allow them. He found SeaWorld's arguments that it wasn't aware of these hazards to be implausible and lambasted its corporate culture of placing the blame for dangerous incidents exclusively on trainers and discouraging trainers from stopping a show—even after an attack.

Information that came out of the testimony during a two-week hearing before Judge Welsch, as well as during previous proceedings, includes the following:

• A senior trainer testified that trainers who work with orcas receive special instruction on Tilikum as well as a "Tilly Talk," in which they're informed of Tilikum's involvement with two previous deaths and that if they enter the water with him, they may not survive. Despite these concerns, trainers were approved to work in close proximity with him and physically touch him at the water's edge.
• Chuck Tompkins, SeaWorld's corporate curator for zoological operations, testified that there are no specific steps for trainers to follow to respond to a life-threatening situation in the water and that their lives are ultimately up to their own "best judgment call." Tompkins admitted that the park does not even re-evaluate its protocols after an injury or death because it deems the injuries "a result of human error" and insisted that revising safety protocols is unnecessary. He also claimed that SeaWorld has "gotten a whole lot better" with the training process over time, despite, as government attorneys noted, the killing of two trainers in a two-month span.
• No high-level managers of animal training at SeaWorld are formally trained in animal behavior nor do they have any professional experience with orcas other that what they learned on the job at SeaWorld. In addition, the company has never called on an independent third party to review its incidents, protocols, or safety procedures.
• Senior SeaWorld employees oversaw orca training at Spain's Loro Parque theme park when trainer Alexis Martinez was killed after being rammed and dragged underwater by an orca named Keto—just two months before Brancheau's death. Judge Welsch saw through SeaWorld's attempt to distance itself from this park, as the killer whales are leased from SeaWorld, SeaWorld trainer Brian Rokeach was stationed at Loro Parque to supervise animal training, and all decisions about animal care and training were made in conjunction with SeaWorld's corporate headquarters.

While SeaWorld's own corporate incident log contains reports of more than 100 incidents of orca aggression at its parks, government attorneys brought up incident after incident that were left out of the log, including the attack leading to Brancheau's death and attacks by an orca who had a penchant for grabbing trainers' ponytails. Yet despite the premature deaths of four human beings—one from extensive internal bleeding—and more than 20 orcas at SeaWorld's parks, the company continues to put profits over humane concerns. Dawn Brancheau would be alive today if SeaWorld had heeded PETA's advice.

How You Can Help Orcas at SeaWorld

Please join PETA in politely asking David Michaels, assistant secretary of labor for
occupational safety and health, to prohibit all direct contact with potentially dangerous animals. And, of course, never, ever go to SeaWorld or any other marine-animal park.

How do you like to celebrate your birthday? How 'bout rockin' out and helping animals? That's what birthday boy Morrissey did: When his vegan tour stopped in San Diego, SeaWorld's hometown, on May 22, the longtime animal advocate gave all of his bandmates PETA's "SeaWorld Sucks" T-shirts to wear onstage.

Joe Scarnici/FilmMagic

Joe Scarnici/FilmMagic

Any SeaWorld folks who were in the audience should have ducked their heads if Moz played "You Should Have Been Nice to Me" or "Shame Is the Name." What else did they expect from the guy who never misses an opportunity to speak up for animals?

Rock out for orcas with your own "SeaWorld Sucks" tee.

Despite the endangered-species status of the southern resident orcas, the federal government is refusing to offer imprisoned orca Lolita the same protection under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) that the rest of her family pod enjoys.

Rojer | cc by 2.0

Legal Hypocrisy

You may recall that the National Marine Fisheries Service classified Washington state's southern resident orca population as endangered, giving it protection from being harmed or harassed under the ESA, but without explanation, it excluded Lolita, who was captured from the pod as a calf and has been held prisoner and forced to perform for the last 42 years. PETA called foul on the unlawful double standard and filed suit on Lolita's behalf, joined by the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), Washington residents, and a former employee of the Miami Seaquarium, where Lolita is held captive.

Legal Runaround

The Miami Seaquarium and the federal government filed motions to get the case dismissed, and the judge acquiesced on timing grounds—he didn't address the merits of the case—meaning that the Miami Seaquarium can continue to confine Lolita to the smallest orca tank in North America (the orca equivalent of a bathtub), prevent her from interacting with any members of her own species, deny her appropriate protection from the sun, and force her to perform silly tricks. But PETA and the ALDF are already regrouping and planning our next move, and the lawsuit's dismissal is merely a hitch in our efforts to see Lolita released into a seaside sanctuary in her home waters.

You Can Help

Please send a polite e-mail to Eric C. Schwabb, assistant administrator for fisheries, urging him to give Lolita her rightful protection under the ESA.

Barbie has been fur-free and an animal rights activist for years. But America's favorite doll has taken a dangerous turn, thanks to famous toymaker Mattel and infamous animal abuser SeaWorld. The companies have released a Whale Trainer Barbie, an ill-advised doll that would be more accurately called "Barbaric."

Fantaz | cc by 2.0

Not much could be in poorer taste than a children's toy that simultaneously glorifies animal abuse and a high risk of personal injury. So PETA wrote to Mattel requesting that if it continues to sell this doll, the company should at least make Whale Trainer Barbie realistic:

Far better that Mattel simply admit this was a false step and withdraw the doll.

If not, what's next? Grand Theft Auto Barbie?

Popular social-networking site Pinterest is great for sharing fashion tips, cool pictures, and recipes—and for calling out a business that abuses animals. When we saw that SeaWorld had started a Pinterest page, we knew we could use it to orcas' advantage.

Wonder what colorful words SeaWorld execs uttered when they saw this:

Anyone who went to SeaWorld's Pinterest page saw animal advocates' calls to release orca Tilikum and the other prisoners to a marine sanctuary.

While our Pinterest protest was a little good clean fun at SeaWorld's expense, we hope the execs are starting to see that no amount of their online hype will keep SeaWorld's cruelty covered up.

Help free Tilly!

In what will now stand as the case that future generations will look back on as the one that broke legal ground for animals, captive orcas were represented in a U.S. federal court in a lawsuit that PETA filed against SeaWorld seeking to establish that five wild-caught orcas deserved protection under the Constitution's 13^th Amendment, which prohibits slavery. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller was the first judge in U.S. history to listen to arguments and give careful consideration to the idea that the definition of slavery does not exclude any species. Yesterday, Judge Miller ruled that the 13^th Amendment doesn't apply to nonhumans.

There is no question that SeaWorld enslaves animals even though the judge in this case didn't see the 13th Amendment as the remedy to that. Women, children, and racial and ethnic minorities were once denied fundamental constitutional rights that are now self-evident, and that day will certainly come for the orcas and all the other animals enslaved for human amusement.

This historic first case for the orcas' right to be free under the 13^th Amendment is one more step toward the inevitable day when all animals will be free from enslavement for human entertainment. Judge Miller's opinion does not change the fact that the orcas who once lived naturally, wild and free, are today kept as slaves by SeaWorld. PETA will continue to pursue every available avenue to fight for these animals.

Legal Experts Weigh In

As Harvard law professor and constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe described the unprecedented lawsuit, "Some may even be offended by the implied comparison of human slavery with the experience of non-humans who are captured in the wild and kept in conditions that are unnatural for the species. But that reaction would overlook both what we have in common with some other species and the many respects in which the Constitution is an essentially aspirational document. Its bold language and broadly expressed principles offer themselves to each generation as we struggle to define our national values in an ever-changing world. Ours is a vibrant Constitution, more than capable of warding off past evils while also speaking to circumstances in which we come to recognize that familiar principles apply in ways previously unforeseen. So it seems to me no abuse of the Constitution to invoke it on behalf of non-human animals cruelly confined for purposes of involuntary servitude."

Caption: Tilikum, pictured above, has a collapsed dorsal fin,
which only occurs in captivity.
milan.bores | cc by 2.0

You can make a difference right now by refusing to buy a ticket to SeaWorld and by talking to parents and grandparents about the miserable existence that animals who live and die in barren, cramped cement tanks endure.