In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Ms. Cowperthwaite said she stood by the film and described any quarrel with its construction as an evasion of her inescapable conclusion: “Killer whales are 100 percent not suitable to captivity.”

“For 40 years, they were the message,” she said, referring to SeaWorld. “I think it’s O.K. to let an 80-minute movie” have its moment.

Since 1965, SeaWorld has kept and displayed dozens of orcas in parks here, in Orlando, Fla., and elsewhere. According to Mr. Taylor and other executives, at least 10 million people a year view some of the 29 whales now held. SeaWorld executives say that without access to the whales — which are now bred at the parks, rather than captured wild — humans would be denied a connection to large, intelligent animals with which many feel a bond.

“We’re deeply transformed by them, the killer whale is an animal that does that,” said Dr. Christopher Dold, SeaWorld’s vice president of veterinary services, who spoke at the company’s San Diego park on Wednesday.

Dr. Dold, Mr. Taylor and others point out that only one trainer has died in a whale encounter at SeaWorld parks, though Tilikum has been associated with three deaths. One of those was at another park, and one involved a man who somehow wound up in his tank at night.

On watching “Blackfish,” Kelly Flaherty Clark, who works with Tilikum as the curator of trainers at SeaWorld’s Orlando park, said she was stunned by the presentation of her testimony at an Occupational Safety and Health Administration hearing, at which SeaWorld was cited for violating trainer safety — claiming it was selective in a way that did not accurately represent her views.