Is SeaWorld’s plan to nearly double the size of its killer whale enclosure a step forward or a token response to negative feedback from the documentary “Blackfish,” which called the marine park’s business practices into question?
That debate was rejoined Jan. 6, when SeaWorld representatives and animal-rights activists from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) renewed their debate over the marine park’s “Blue World Project” at a meeting of the Mission Bay Park Committee in Mission Beach.
Announced last year, the project is a master-planned expansion of the park’s killer whale environment.
“We’re going to replace the existing pool in the same place, making it 50 feet deep and 350 feet across,” said SeaWorld spokesman Jerry Howes about the park’s expansion plans to reconfigure the orca habitat by 2018.
Details on the project, an informational item only before the park committee, will be presented to the California Coastal Commission for review later this year.
Animal-rights activists view SeaWorld’s expansion plans as a negative.
“This is clearly a drop in the bucket, a desperate maneuver by SeaWorld to turn back the hands of time when people are learning about the suffering that these orcas go through in captivity,” argued PETA campaigner and spokesman Matt Bruce during broadcast interviews prior to the committee hearing. “It is fluff for visitors and does nothing for the orcas who are still confined to small, barren concrete tanks that they have to swim in in circles with chemically treated water. Even if you make the prison bigger, it’s still a prison.”
A handful of PETA protestors stood outside and inside the Santa Clara Recreation Center, where the park committee meeting was held, holding signs protesting orcas being held in captivity, which activists contend is a “failed business model.”
“We’re kind of changing our business model right now, building twice as big a habitat for the killer whales, making sure they continue to stay happy, breed and their numbers grow,” answered Mike Scarpuzzi, SeaWorld’s vice president of zoological operations, who defended SeaWorld’s expansion plans as “the best thing for the animals.”
Scarpuzzi characterized PETA opposition as “radicals with an extreme point of view that we don’t accept.”
Asked about the timing of the orca habitat expansion, coming in the wake of public blowback from “Blackfish” and declining profits from SeaWorld’s three U.S. marine parks, Scarpuzzi said it was “more coincidental than anything.
“I’ve been here almost 40 years, and there’s always ebbs and flows in any business,” he said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that SeaWorld is going to be strong and we’re going to continue.”
Scarpuzzi added this is the fourth planned expansion of SeaWorld’s orca habitat. He pointed out development of large-scale projects like Blue Ocean “take time,” adding that “we’ve been talking about this expansion for many years.”
PETA has challenged the ethics of keeping killer whales captive and profiting from their alleged commercial exploitation in public shows, brought to a flashpoint by the critical documentary “Blackfish.”
Bruce noted killer whales dive up to 1,000 feet deep in the wild and swim up to 100 miles a day.
“They would have to swim 1,500 laps in their expanded tanks to approximate what they would swim in the wild,” Bruce said. “So this isn’t anything to do with making lives better for these animals.”
Scarpuzzi added SeaWorld is now into its fourth generation of orcas bred in captivity in the park, noting the most recent baby was born just 32 days ago.
“Killer whales don’t breed if they’re unhappy,” Scarpuzzi contended. “These animals were born and raised here, and now they have their families here.”
Asked his impression of “Blackfish,” Scarpuzzi described it as “one truth… Yes, somebody died, but all the rest… is a lot misrepresentations and, frankly, a lot of lies.”
Scarpuzzi said the marine park’s main concern is “about our animals and giving them the best environment we possibly can.”
Bruce attacked the Blue World Project labeling it as “unnatural” and not in the best interest of killer whales.
“If SeaWorld is really interested in changing their image and doing the right thing by these animals, they would release them to seaside sanctuaries, where they can feel the ocean surround them and where they can hear the cries of distant relatives and maybe one day swim free with them,” Bruce said.
Asked about SeaWorld’s characterization of them as “radical,” Bruce replied, “There’s nothing radical about caring for these animals, wanting them to be left in the wild to live their lives as nature intended. What is radical is capturing these animals in the wild, artificially inseminating them and forcing them to live in small tanks that are the human equivalent of a bathtub, then forcing them to do tricks for crowds of screaming people.”