If you haven’t seen the Blackfish documentary, then you should really check it out. It shines a light on the treatment of animals, specifically orcas, kept at Seaworld and other similar water parks.

Since the documentary was released, it caused a huge amount of controversy on both sides of the argument – people disgusted with what they’d learned, and people picking holes in the claims and refusing to believe what they’d been told.

But perhaps the most interesting of all the responses was how Seaworld decided to address the claims, in a post titled “The truth about Blackfish”, which was published on their site (now deleted). Within this post they made some very interesting claims, including:

None of the scientists in the documentary have any experience with captive whales (despite Ken Balcomb appearing in the doc, the founder of the Center for Whale Research)

The trainers included in the documentary did not have sufficient credentials to speak authoritatively on the subject matter

Captive orcas live just as long as wild orcas

Interesting to note that the facts brought up in the documentary are still being debated to this day, but one thing is for certain – the documentary definitely provoked a lot of discussion.

If you’d like to read more about this, The DoDo did a great write up.

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