Orcas won't eat us, but we can kill their souls

Orca minds are made for more than doing repetitive tricks (yes, tricks, not “behaviours”) in order to eat dead fish.

Orca bodies are made to swim more than 100 kilometres a day, not to languish in a substandard tank like Lolita’s at the Miami Seaquarium.

Lolita is one of “our own,” taken from her L pod family in 1970, from Penn Cove, Whidbey Island. She has spent the past 41 years in a concrete pool not as deep as she is long.

Her only orca companion in all those years, Hugo, killed himself as a young teen in March 1980 after 12 years of captivity by repeatedly ramming his head into the wall of the tank. That was 31 years ago.

The U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Association hearings will be held this month as well, an inquiry into Sea World’s safety practices for employees, as a result of Tilikum having killed Dawn Brancheau last year.

Orca captivity is not entertainment, and is clearly abusive and a torture for these intelligent, family bonded, culturally complex cetaceans. Animal abuse is never a glamorous career choice.