The California Coastal Commission voted to approve SeaWorld’s plan for a new orca prison, but only after a commissioner proposed a key amendment: no more breeding, which will ultimately end captivity for long-suffering orcas in California. SeaWorld has admitted that it intended to breed even more orcas to fill the new tanks, but the commission’s action today ensures that no more orcas will be condemned to a nonlife of loneliness, deprivation, and misery if SeaWorld proceeds with their Blue World project. SeaWorld is a sea circus, and the orcas are its abused elephants. PETA wants SeaWorld to stop building tanks and start emptying the ones they’ve got by sending the orcas to coastal sanctuaries, where they’d finally have some semblance of a natural life.

In nature, orcas choose their own mates. But at SeaWorld, orcas are forced to breed on a regular basis. Male orcas are trained to float on their backs, and their trainers masturbate them to collect their sperm. Females are artificially inseminated and forced to breed at a much younger age than they would in nature.

SeaWorld Orca Masturbation VideoDear greedy #SeaWorld CEO: Please explain how masturbating an orca is “NATURAL.” #SeaWorldSucks Posted by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) on Friday, October 9, 2015

The commission received more than 120,000 e-mails and letters from concerned PETA supporters, and hundreds of protesters, including actor Pamela Anderson, turned out at the Long Beach Convention & Entertainment Center. During the hearing, PETA representatives recounted incidences of calves being torn from their mothers, forced pregnancies, and premature deaths. One orca was force-fed Valium to curb his aggression—which was triggered by his confinement.

There is no denying the abusement park’s sorry track record—SeaWorld has been cited for violating the Animal Welfare Act and fined for inadequately protecting its employees—or its bleak bottom line: Attendance and revenue are nosediving, and its shares are losing value. In the wake of the Commission’s decision, early trading the very next day showed that the value of SeaWorld stock took another hit, dropping nearly 6 percent.

People are disgusted, and new facilities won’t stem the decline.

What You Can Do

Share this blog, and tell SeaWorld to retire the orcas to ocean sanctuaries.