Kasatka's Impending Death has SeaWorld in Full Scramble Mode

The tragedy of Kasatka... with a tribute to her by VOTO's Samantha Berg

Photo v #Elizabeth#Blackfish Kasatka is immunocompromised from stress & years of meds. She is literally being eaten alive #CaptivityKills pic.twitter.com/EPCP7RkgR8

— Voice of the Orcas (@Voice_OT_Orcas) July 11, 2017

First, some context: 

In the run-up to SeaWorld's (SW) next earnings report at noon Eastern time (USA) on August 8th, the company is in full scramble mode. SEAS stock is currently trading below $15.00 and pressure is mounting on CEO Joel Manby to get the ship turned around, or perhaps more accurately... prevent it from sinking. 


The captivity-corp is under two Federal Investigations & the old SW guard wants leadership change. Former execs are being investigated for misleading statements which downplayed Blackfish movie's actual impact on earnings & attendance, and also for possible insider trading. Our prediction is that the Justice Department & the SEC will find a bounty of Blackfish related emails on company servers. 

TIME: Seaworld's Profits Drop 84% After Blackfish Documentary

Duped investors are angry, having potentially lost millions. Insiders have paid themselves handsomely through rough times, publicly blaming things like "Easter," and in spite of missing financial targets. The natives are restless. 




Meanwhile the obvious solution to SW's woes, sea sanctuaries, alternately referred to as #EmptyTheTanks, are being ignored and mocked by the captivity giant, which is now primarily controlled by China’s the Zhonghong Zhuoye Group. Instead of changing its ways, SeaWorld is working with the Chinese & United Arab Emirates to exploit whales and dolphins in places with fewer animal protections. So much for conservation. But then again, it was never really about that.

SeaWorld under multiple federal investigations as attendance and revenue plummet: report https://t.co/SqrLPqqypz pic.twitter.com/K4gn8i0CXE

— Raw Story (@RawStory) June 24, 2017

There are multiple law firms working on class action suits, with at least one going to trial, at this point. See article here: 

Class Action Lawsuit vs SeaWorld Promises Drama & Discovery

And then there's Kasatka...

Immunocompromised Kasatka succumbing to opportunistic pathogens

A wild born female North Atlantic orca captured by the theme park in 1978, the mother of multiple "assets," as SW refers to "their" whales in financial documents, & the former matriarch at the California park for the last several decades. Kasatka will forever be immortalized by her thrashing of Trainer Ken Peters as seen in this video below from CNN: 

See CNN video below with comments from VOTO's Carol Ray. 

Estimated to be about 40 years of age, she won't experience that long post-menopausal life enjoyed by her wild cousins. Wild females experience reproductive senescence (the equivalent of menopause) at 40-48 years of age. Killer whales, humans, and short-finned pilot whales are the only 3 mammals on the planet known to go through menopause. Dr Darren Croft discusses the evolution of killer whale "menopause" here at #Superpod5: 


 


Learn more about killer whale matriarchs from Dr Astrid van Ginneken MD, PhD, in the video below: 

A Tribute to Kasatka by Samantha Berg 

I just saw photos of Kasatka’s disease ravaged body. 

Tom Hall, Gabriela Cowperthwaite, Manny Oteyza, Jeffrey Ventre, Samantha Berg (speaking), John Jett, John Hargrove 

Inevitably Kasatka’s death will be portrayed by the SeaWorld corporation as a tragedy. SeaWorld will say they are saddened to lose (yet another!) family member. They will tell the public and the media that they did everything they could to give her a loving home, restaurant quality fish, superior dental care and a whole host of other lies that should be familiar to anyone who is dialed in to the anti-captivity movement.

Kasatka’s trainers will be sad, the public will mourn, and the news cycle will move on to the next story and Kasatka will be forgotten. 


NOTE: This PR video doesn't show Kasatka very well. They strategically keep her hidden or turned away from the camera. Note the language. This video is preparing the public and media for death by pneumonia even though she is being eaten alive by disease.  SW will emphasize that pneumonia is the leading cause of death in killer whales, although not true for wild orca, as far as we can tell.  We have not been able to find evidence that pneumonia is the leading cause of mortality for wild orca. The reality is that Kasatka is being eaten away, possibly by a bacteria, fungus or photo-toxicity due to antibiotic overuse. Generally speaking the pathogen-type is not relevant to her impending death & current suffering. Of course SeaWorld doesn't tell us what is eating her flesh, just that it is not fungal. 







So, before she goes I want people to at least know this:

It is Kasatka’s LIFE – not her death- that is the real tragedy

Kasatka was stolen from her true family in Iceland in 1978. She has spent the last 39 years in prison. Her crime? She was born a killer whale – a species so intelligent, beautiful and intriguing to humans that the owners of Seaworld knew they could put her on display and charge other humans just to watch her swim in a tank.






Kasatka’ body has not been ravaged by illness alone – she has been forced to perform via food deprivation for every day of her life for the last 39 years. She has also been forced to bear children that were then removed from her side and relocated to other corporate-owned prisons. Given what we know about the bonds between mother and calves – this is an even greater violation than food deprivation and amounts to extreme emotional abuse.

Captivity: A bad idea from the beginning. The original Shamu seen here thrashing the company secretary for a promo video

Kasatka is not an individual – she is a corporate asset worth millions of dollars to a corporation that cares about her only to the extent that she can continue to perform and generate revenue. Her owners don’t care how she feels or that she just might have memories of another happier life in the ocean.



Kasatka is one of only 4 remaining wild-captured killer whales still living in US Seaworld parks. With her passing there will only be 3 – Ulysses and Corky in San Diego and Katina in Orlando.


Sadly, the practice of capturing wild killer whales has not ended – the Russians continue to capture whales and the Chinese are building new facilities for whales to perform, breed and be on display.


Morgan, a killer whale who was “rescued” in the Netherlands remains in prison at Loro Parque in the Canary Islands even though she could have been a candidate for release.

Tilikum, also captured near Iceland, lived a miserable life at SeaWorld from 1992 until his death in 2017

While SeaWorld will say that Kasatka’s life performing circus tricks for food helped them to provide an educational experience for countless numbers of school children who stream through their turnstiles every year – this is also a lie.

Watching whales perform tricks in captivity is a distraction from the very real dangers facing our planet and our oceans right now.

@SeaWorld in full scramble mode with Fed investigations, CEO Manby on the ropes & #Blackfish #Kasatka suffering now pic.twitter.com/psyokS83S0

— Voice of the Orcas (@Voice_OT_Orcas) July 15, 2017

Did Kasatka’s prison term help to educate park goers about ocean acidification, plastic pollution, fish farm effluent or dams that are right now causing salmon populations to crash and thus leading to the death and starvation of a wild pod of killer whales in the Pacific Northwest?

Will her death wake people up enough to address these issues? Likely not.

At least in death, Kasatka’s decades of suffering will finally come to an end. My heart breaks for her, not because she is dying but because she deserved better.

RIP Kasatka

Note: Samantha's comments used with permission and also appear in this article at The Dolphin Project v Elizabeth Batt