Blackfish - tonight BBC4 9pm

[HesterShaw]

It anyone's not seen this documentary, it's well worth a watch. It was very well received at the Sundance film festival and has got Seaworld on the run, which was the intention :).

It will make you think very hard about marine mammals in captivity, as well as it being very entertaining.

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

It on iPlayer btw.

With respect to the Cove, Sea Shephard is in Tajji at the moment and they live stream all the slaughter. It really is horrific, and well worth a google if you want to find out more about the wild capture of cetaceans.

[HowlingTrap]

I've watched this twice, showed my mate the trailer other day too and she watched it too and was putting up lots of statuses regarding the film, I'm onlky early 20's and I think its an age range that seems to off the radar for many film docs and afterall we are the next family having generation.

Very disturbing how a Marine Park of hundreds of cameras has 0 evidence of that dukes bloke being killed, very chilling ...oh and a night guard, it did occur to me that as a recently arrested man they were aware and didn't help him the autopsy report his genitals were bitten off and bitten all over :O.

Although 3 fatalities in 20 odd years I am surprised that's all , given the danger. I would be interested to see what the fatality rates/accident rates are in other countries, poorer facilities.

I saw the video last night of the dolphin leaping out of a tank and dying :( the dolphins stick with him watching through the tank.

[HesterShaw]

Seaworld is considered to be one of the "better" ones.

The sad fact is that these places are springing up all over the world, especially in places whose record on animal welfare is not what it could be e.g. in Dubai. There is one in the Canaries which keeps an orca called Morgan. Morgan's story is heartbreaking. As a juvenile she was washed ashore injured in the Netherlands, but her state wasn't bad enough for her either to be euthanised or kept captive for the rest of her life. The Dutch authorities arranged for her to be rescued and treated, and if it had all been done quickly she could have been released in plenty of time for her family to have been found and for her to rejoin them. Instead the Dutch government sold her to the marine park in the Canaries, where her life is one of unrelenting misery. She is currently having to be kept separately from the others as they are harming her, but she is also harming herself. Her teeth are damaged because she is constantly driving herself against the wall of the pool. As time goes on, she will break more and more of her teeth which would mean she could not be released successfully because she wouldn't be able to hunt. Obviously it is in the park's interest for her to damage as much of herself as possible. They wanted her genes for their breeding programme Details here.

[Justshabbynochic]

I watched last night. Heartbreaking, especially the bit where the babies were seperated from the mums. The neuroscientist they had on says that these whales' brains have an additional part than ours that means they have more emotional awareness than we do...so however horrifying we would find it to have our babies ripped away from us, these poor animals probably feel it on a level we can't even grasp.

I went to Seaworld in Texas once, and also was told all the lies about how they've saved whales in the wild, etc.

[WowOoo]

I forgot about this. Thanks for the reminder, I'll see it on iPlayer.

I 'spoilt our holiday' once for refusing to go to SeaWorld with then Dp. Now Dh has come around to my way of thinking.

[HesterShaw]

Well done for spoiling your holiday Wow! More and more people are it seems :)


I'm sure that your average child, once s/he knows the truth, would NEVER go to a place which causes such misery just so they can be entertained. That's what I always say to people who say "Well we went for the children really...don't you try and spoil their fun....my kids deserve to go blah blah blah...."

[magentastardust]

I saw it too, it was pretty shocking.

I found the Whale dragging the trainer down to the bottom of the tank and up and down again very disturbing, the trainer handled it so well but the look on his face just before he escaped -as if he was resigned to what was away to happen to him. That wasn't a really quick incident either why did no one help, no one tried to distract the whale with food, it felt like the poor man's last few minutes of life were just being watched.

So awful hearing the SW trainers spouting the lies they had been told about the dorsal fin and the life span , I really felt for them too.

That poor mother whale when her baby was taken from her too -I am another one years ago who visited an never really thought about how the animals were being treated :(

[HowlingTrap]

I'm watching Morgan the killer Whale on youtube :'( in a tank 7X20m smallest captivity tank in the world :'( you can see the floor of the tank its horrible, it looks someone has flooded a gym and stuck a whale in it.

John Selleck being crushed by Tilikum, I had seen that video before but I still Gasp everytime, I would have like to have heard from him, when she said only his wetsuit held him together *vom. poor, poor man.

[HowlingTrap]

I'm Watching Lolita slave to Entertainment now...argh, this doc has made me obsessed!!

[Bombus]

Amazing documentary. I wish it had been shown on BBC1 peak time, so more people could be made aware of the situation. I was in tears when the man was describing how they trapped them in the 70s. So depressing on so many levels.

[CharlieAlphaKiloEcho]

I'm watching that now Howling :(

[Meglet]

I only saw the last 20 minutes but it confirmed the disgust I feel towards captive whales and dolphins .

The image of that poor whale cooped up in what is pretty much a pond is such a waste.

Does anyone know what happened to that whale shark that was captured and plonked in the Dubai aquarium? I'm not sure if it died or was still in there?

[Meglet]

Oh, and London Aquarium is pretty grim too. I tolerated walking round it but was getting angrier at each tank. The poor penguins and cayman are just in little boxes with no natural light.

We didn't hang around long in there.

[Justshabbynochic]

I wish they could be released in either the wild if healthy enough or into sea pens. Surely the fat cats at the top have made enough profit......

[CharlieAlphaKiloEcho]

There is a petition to help free Lolita here

DS is ill today so we've had a duvet day and I've spent all afternoon reading about whales and campaigns. It's heartbreaking. They are such intelligent creatures.

[CharlieAlphaKiloEcho]

And if you search whale on change.org there's a fair few petitions to sign. Including one about Tilikum.

I'm under no illusion that this is really helping but it can start to spread the word at least.

[HesterShaw]

Charlie, I think there is so much more awareness now amongst the general public - even within the last 12 months, big strides have been made. Seaworld's revenues have dropped massively, and India has outlawed captive cetacean facilitates, for example. In the UK we haven't had any since the early nineties - our remaining two bottlenose dolphins were freed from their pool in Brighton and taken to the Caribbean. The next step is banning them in EU countries and spreading the word amongst European tourists who make up a huge number of visitors to such places in the Middle East and Asia.

The Cove was a shocking film, but it didn't have the impact Blackfish is having amongst the general public. It was too far "removed" from the end product i.e people didn't connect a bunch of wild eyed madmen in Japan
slaughtering dolphins with Seaworld shows. Blackfish is easier to understand.

[FixItUpChappie]

I was so outraged I wrote SeaWorld an email advising I would never set foot in one of their parks again.

I found it very odd that everyone just watched all these incidents (and deaths) - I mean I feel for the whales - they shouldn't be in this position...but you watch Tilikum kill 2 trainers - no gun, no stun darts, no nothing to help - you just watch??

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

no gun, no stun darts, no nothing to help

As far as I know cetaceans are incredibly resilient. I believe that to kill them requires explosives or stabbing them repeatedly.

[HowlingTrap]

I don't think you can sedate whales can you?

I agree I think BBC1 would have been a good forum for this.

I Thought the cove seemed to focus a lot on the food side of things too mislabelling food, mercury poisioning, we don't eat dolphin etc over here seems far too removed I agree, I think the slaughtering etc also effects how palatable it is too the mass public. So less people will watch it, I felt like I was watching a snuff film to some degree.

[HesterShaw]

In my opinion, the Cove seemed more gory than it actually was. The very distressing scenes were mainly only towards the end and throughout much if the film, they were kind of hinted at more than anything. And I thought the climax, when Ric O'Barry walked through the IWC conference wearing a tv screen showing the slaughter was masterful.


Even now, however, the IWC remain uninterested in dolphins and porpoises and so the slaughter continues.

[GlitterStag]

Apparently Lolita's Mother is still alive and resident off the coast of Washington. She is estimated to be in her eighties. Heartbreaking.

[CharlieAlphaKiloEcho]

I saw that GlitterStag. It seems she would be very easy to release but they just won't do it. 30 years of service and she's still not earned her freedom


I think the worst thing is that they are very very social. The pods have their own 'languages' that set them apart from each other. Yet they are held sometimes completely alone and sometimes with others that hold no familial connection. That just seems overly cruel given their nature.

[womma]

I've just watched it. What a brilliantly well done documentary. I'm now feeling terrible for taking DD to the Aquarium for her birthday.

Free Tilli! And all the other captives.

[HowlingTrap]

And the fact the tanks are Illegal! I was gobsmacked at how that is allowed to continue.

The morgan whale tank, the floor is in line with the viewing window :'(