#pro-cap

[hostilehospitalbeds]

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Such gorgeous creatures ❤️

[hostilehospitalbeds]

there’s another reblog on that post by someone saying neither should be kept in captivity bc they’re not domesticated which is the dumbest thing i’ve ever heard. there’s a difference between keeping a wild animal in a house and keeping it in a zoological facility. i hate anti-caps so much

[cetacean-central]

Some of the comments I found amusing in the Facebook comments on SeaWorlds big announcement 😂😂 bloody pro caps.

[everythingisahoax]

SeaWorld’s profit figures must be inversely proportional to the level of Pro-cap butthurt on display on Tumblr.

[papajimbles]

Seaworld

I had to write an article for school and I chose to write about Seaworld. It would be awesome if some people read it and told me what they thought.

As kids, most of us watched or heard of the movie Free Willy. What most people don’t realize however, is that Free Willy was based on a real Orca named Keiko. Keiko was taken from his family in Iceland when he was very young and then kept in a small, chlorinated and unshaded  pool at an amusement park in Mexico City. Fortunately for Keiko he was removed from the Mexican amusement park and placed in a rehabilitation facility at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. After six years Keiko was completely healed and released into the wild.  Keiko was lucky to have his happy ending, while many of the Orca’s still in captivity today, may never have theirs.

Imagine having to live in the average suburban swimming pool for the rest of your life, because that’s what the Orcas at Seaworld face. In order for the captive Orcas at Seaworld to swim their wild counterparts daily distance each day, they would have to swim the main show pool more than 1,400 times. Most Orcas don’t get this chance as they are kept in even smaller pools in the back. Even the Orcas that are lucky enough to be kept in the show pool would rather spend their time laying on the bottom of the pool or floating listlessly near the surface, a behavior called logging. This cramped environment leads to a condition called dorsal fin collapse, which is when the dorsal fin of an Orca falls over. This is caused by the Orcas spending too much time by the surface where gravity pushes down on their fins. While less than one percent of wild Orcas have dorsal fin collapse, 100% of captive Orcas have dorsal fin collapse.

Cramped conditions are not even the worst of what these captive cetaceans face. In the wild, Orcas, particularly males, spend their entire lives with their mothers and the rest of their family pod. Seaworld destroyed these natural relationships by tearing more than 25 calves away from their mothers and shipping them off to other parks or moving them to other pools. This has great repercussions as many of the calves that have been taken never learned how to be mothers. On top of the Orcas not learning to be mothers, female Orcas are bred at an incredibly young age, around age eight while wild Orcas start breeding around 14, this combination leads to the disastrous result of many mothers rejecting their calves. This rarely happens in the wild but many times at Seaworld female Orcas have given birth only to swim away from their calf or even shows aggression towards it.

Orcas in the wild eat a wide range of food, from sharks and seals to fish and seabirds. Captive Orcas however, eat dead fish, up to 83 pounds of gelatin, and a valium like drug. These Orcas need gelatin because the cetaceans mainly get their water from their food, but the fish Seaworld feeds their cetaceans are very low in water content. On top of this, the water the Orcas live in is too pristine for them to drink, causing them to need water supplements in the form of gelatin to prevent dehydration. Orcas are the ocean's top predator, in areas where they meet Great Whites, they kill Great Whites, so it’s no surprise that these captive animals can get aggressive. To combat this Seaworld gives their Orcas a valium like drug to help curb their aggressive tendencies and cure their depression, as some captive cetaceans have tried to commit suicide by throwing themselves over the sides of their tanks. Any animal that needs drugs to be safe around humans in captivity, should not be in captivity.

Conservation is a huge part of the Seaworld argument. Some Seaworld supporters believe that because Seaworld is one of the largest rescue facilities in the US, nothing they do can be bad. These same people believe that Seaworld could not rescue animals without captive Orcas shows, but Seaworld mainly gets its rescue money from government grants, only about six cents from every 80 dollar ticket goes into conservation. In the end, nothing that Seaworld does will ever make up for the fact that they abuse the animals known as “Shamu.”

[eu-orca]

Questions to ask pro-caps...

1. Do you think it’s fair to clip the wings of a bird?

2. What have you learnt from this captive animal we couldn't have learnt from this animal in the wild?

3. What do you think of the prison system in the USA/UK?

4. How much do you understand about your own brain?

5. Could you live in one room for the rest of your life?

[saddlepatch]

This week...

In Anti-caps making silly statements: "Not enough consideration has been given for the moral implications of confining a huge animal like the killer whale in a relatively tiny space like an aquarium tank. There'd be quite an outcry if a dog were kept in a cage of the same relative size."-Ian MacAskie, Pacific Biological Station, Canada. Last time I checked, the show pool at Shamu Stadium is bigger than my house (it’s like 10 of my houses. We’re gonna define “cage” as tank or housing, as orcas in captivity are NOT kept in cages, but housing, like most dogs and other pets). I share my home with 1 cat and 2 dogs and 2 other people.  I’m sorry, but by this logic, that means that there would already be an outcry over dog owners who live in 500 sqft apartments with their dogs. I don’t hear no crying about that. So please try again.

[anti-seaworld-fiction]

The Recruitment Process.

What it takes to get the ego-stroking job of a Shamu trainer.

Edited. Version 2.

The Recruitment Process

Ryan shuffles through a pile of application forms and resumes, looking over them, tasked with finding an appropriate employee to join the ranks of killer whale trainer. So far he has divided the forms based on age and gender. His co-worker, Sandra, would be dealing with male applicants. After all, she has proven to be reliable in finding the perfect workers.

The first he sees fits the physical requirements for the role of a killer whale trainer. Tall, slender and graceful. However, he knows that no-one will want to visit the park if one of its trainers is coloured. Red-blooded ‘Muricans won’t like it one bit. The park is located in one of the southern states, and individuals belonging to an ethnic minority are still not really seen as people.

So Ryan decides to give her a janitorial position. Park patrons will see her wearing an unflattering uniform while pushing a cleaning cart around and think nothing of it. And she will earn her pay by cleaning baby’s first diarrhoea explosion off the walls of the ladies toilets.

The next candidate walks in. She is attractive enough – if you happen to like dwarves. She barely tops five foot and her young and sweet-looking countenance is ruined by her upturned nose. Some might find it cute. Ryan finds it makes her look piggish. Besides, her short stature means there’s no way she’d be able to straddle the back of one of the parks’ adult orcas as it carries her around the tank.

Disappointment crosses her face when he tells her that the trainer position had already been claimed. “There are jobs going over in the café,” he tells her. So he ships her off to serve over-priced and fattening junk food to the patrons. He just has to remember to send her a crate to stand on.

Another prospective employee enters the room. Ryan is surprised that she can actually move on her own without the need for a motorized scooter. This… thing… looks like she’d be more at home raiding the shelves of Wal-Mart instead of applying for a trainer position.

He’s relieved that SeaWorld stopped using the black and white wet-suits. If they still did, the audience would react badly to it, all confused and scared because they don’t know why Shamu is flopping around on the slide-out. And question why the trainers aren't trying to push him back in. He does briefly consider the thought that some of the male staff might be able to engage in a une partie carrée with her fat folds if they aren’t bothered by the smell.

It’s too much of a risk. He thanks her for coming in and sends her on her way with the promise that he'll get back to her regarding the job. Sitting at his desk Ryan rifles through some more applications, trying to find someone more suitable when she walks in unannounced.

His annoyance is short-lived when he sees her. Five-foot ten, with blonde hair flowing down her back, bronze skin and bright blue eyes. He is instantly drawn to her prodigious chest straining at the fabric of her crew neck t-shirt. It is apparent she is not wearing anything else under it.

He realizes that he's staring at the poster child for SeaWorld, and offers her a seat.

“Can I get you anything…?” he trails off, leafing through application forms. “What was your name again?”

“Skye Dawson.”

He finds her paperwork, scans it for relevant details. “OK, here we go. Are you sure you wouldn’t like something? A drink, maybe?”

“A job would be better.”

Her voice teases his ears, smooth and sultry, and she flashes a sparkling smile. He knows she’s the one, but he can’t just give her the job. She would have to work at it, and decides to test her determination.

“I’ve had quite a few applicants come in, and I’ve still got quite a few more to get through today.”

“I’m quite certain I’m your best candidate.”

“Well now, it wouldn’t be right if I didn’t give others a chance.”

Skye gets to her feet and sashays over to his side of the desk. Her delicate perfume washes over him, subtle and non-cloying, and he watches as she grabs the front of her t-shirt and yanks it down.

“What do you think,” she murmurs.

He licks his lips, his throat dry like sandpaper as he stares at the gorgeous creature standing before him. There are no tan lines, her skin the same golden hue as the rest of her. The male staff would lust after her, and she’d set a standard for future female trainers to aspire to.

“Well now,” he says. “I think I can add you to the short-list. If you’ll come back tomorrow we can start the interview process to get everything in order.”

She pushes herself back inside her crew neck and remains standing next to his desk.

“Does it have to wait until then?” Skye gives him another smile, white teeth peeking out between her lips. “I’m sure we can do it sometime tonight.”

Bold and gorgeous. “I’m sure we can arrange a private one on one interview. How does eight o’clock sound?”