The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have launched a renewed attack against SeaWorld with claims by the organization’s veterinarian Dr Heather Rally that she found multiple violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act at a SeaWorld park in San Antonio.



SeaWorld has been under a lot of scrutiny since the release of the documentary Blackfish, which highlighted the deaths of SeaWorld trainers working with an aggressive whale. The parks have also seen its attendance and stock price drop.

Rally did not conduct a clinical veterinary examination of the animals. Rather, she observed them from a distance, during an unannounced visit to the park on 25 June. She claimed she was able to see neglect through the interactions the park allows everyday visitors to have with the aquatic animals.

“All of the findings that I presented are all things that anyone can go to any SeaWorld park and observe,” Rally told the Guardian. “I happen to have a little more experience, including specialized training in marine mammal medicine so I know certain things that I’m looking for that other people might not pick up on, but the first step to any good clinical examination is examination at a distance, and that’s exactly what I’ve done for these animals – both their physical appearance and health and also their behavior.”

Andrew Trites, the director of the Marine Mammal Research Unit at the University of British Columbia, said that in ideal circumstances, to understand an animal’s medical situation, one would examine the animal closely and consult with its attending veterinarian.

“I think that one should go a bit further and speak to the veterinarian staff – they’ve got health records for the animals – to really understand, perhaps, what’s been observed and what the history has been,” he said. “One can certainly jump to premature conclusions without any follow up.”

SeaWorld issued a statement after Rally’s press conference on Tuesday that said animal care at their facilities is strictly regulated by the federal government.

“We are accredited by two professional zoological associations,” they wrote. “In fact, according to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, SeaWorld is ‘meeting or exceeding the highest standard of animal care and welfare of any zoological organization in the world’.”

The Peta veterinarian said that she saw both orcas and sea lions being mistreated. She said the orcas had severe dental trauma, most likely from gnawing on their enclosures or grinding their teeth.

“When you take orcas and dolphins, who are highly intelligent, very emotional, far-ranging creatures and you put them in a concrete tank often with animals they’re not compatible with, it causes stress and it causes boredom and the results of that is the development of abnormal behaviors,” she said.

Trites said animals in captivity can experience teeth trauma but “most facilities are aware of that and do everything they can to prevent that from happening”. He compared orcas’ teeth trauma to that of other animals, like cats and dogs, whom he said have chipped or broken teeth on occasion too, even if their owners are attentive. He said that whales can have dental issues in the wild too.

“I think in the wild even, there would be some issues but the opportunity for that kind of thing to happen is more likely in captivity because there’s more things that an animal might catch its teeth on, for example,” he said.

Rally said some orcas had rake marks, parallel linear scars caused by other aggressive whales, which she said would not occur as frequently in the wild where the subordinate orca could retreat from an altercation. She stated that incompatible animals are housed together at SeaWorld, resulting in more altercations.



She also observed collapsed dorsal fins on 100% of the male orcas, something that she claimed rarely happens in the wild. Trites said that whales in the wild usually do not have collapsed dorsal fins because the motion of diving deep into water keeps the fin straight until it solidifies. But he said a collapsed fin does not have any negative health effects. It could result in increased drag but not significantly, and even still, captive animals are “receiving a lot more food than the energy that they’re expending”.

Rally also visited the sea lion and seal enclosure, which she said had no shaded areas, something that can lead to various health problems from “stress to sunburn to ocular disease, eye diseases”. Sea lions are particularly susceptible to ocular disease, according to Rally, something that is aggravated by the trainers having them look up into the sunlight towards crowds in order to receive food.

“If they’re spending more time on the surface, exposed to direct sunlight they can have damage to the eyes,” Trites said. “Most facilities, as a result, will use shading to shade animals from direct sunlight.”



Rally has made similar claims about SeaWorld in the past. In October 2014, Peta filed a complaint with the US Department of Agriculture against the San Diego park about the conditions for their dolphins, orcas, whales and walruses.

At the time, Rally had just graduated from Western University of Health Sciences and had approximately a year’s worth of experience working with marine mammal rescue and rehabilitation organizations, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Trites said that many of the behaviors Rally spoke about are known to happen to animals in captivity, but “facilities do put in procedures to try and prevent them from happening again should they be happening currently”.

He added: “I think the thing to realize here is that none of these facilities that are caring for animals are purposefully mistreating animals. And when they do find problems that have occurred, they will put in procedures to prevent that from occurring again or to minimize the risk of it occurring again.”

SeaWorld stood behind their commitment to the welfare of their animals and their 1,500 zoological team members.

“Today’s press conference represents the ninth time in just over two years that Peta has called for an investigation into SeaWorld’s animal care practices; not one of these claims resulted in a citation. Today’s allegations are no different.”