Sea World Quotes

“Places of confinement providing free food and medical care are called prisons.”
― John Lilly

“Tragically, the average life expectancy during this era for captive orcas stood between one to four years. Aquariums often went through a whole series of whales before just one of them made it into adolescence. Today, the life expectancy of captive killer whales has improved: rising to about ten years. Yet this is still a far cry from the thirty to sixty years that orcas can live in the ocean.”
― Jason Hribal, Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance

“Sea World has owned fifty-one orcas called Shamu. The original Shamu was captured in 1965, after animal collector Ted Griffin harpooned the calf’s mother in Puget Sound.”
― Jason Hribal, Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance

“Sea World orcas work as many as eight shows a day, 365 days a year. In the ocean, these whales can swim up to ninety miles a day. In captivity, the tanks are measured in feet. In the ocean, orcas have highly evolved and cohesive matriarchal cultures. Generations of family members, combining both females and males, spend their entire lives together—with each family, or pod, communicating its own unique dialect. In captivity, little to none of this exists. Orca culture is effectively destroyed.”
― Jason Hribal, Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance

“Sea World was treading carefully. Park officials stated repeatedly how essential and valuable Tilikum had been to their operations. This is true. Zoos and circuses are a business, and Blackstone paid 2.3 billion dollars for its purchase. The most productive employees in that business, in terms of labor and revenue, are the orcas themselves. Tilikum has performed for almost nineteen years in Orlando, sired thirteen calves, and produced in the range of a billion dollars in revenue. Nevertheless, Sea World did not believe that Tilikum had earned the right to retire. None of that billion dollars would be used to build an ocean sanctuary for older captive orcas. They do not deserve it.”
― Jason Hribal, Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance

“Dona is not doing it because she is forced to', Jill would say to the audience, with their hats and cameras, attentively sitting along the bleachers, which would shortly be soaked in salt water. 'Dona is doing this because she actually wants to'.”
― Bernardo E. Lopes, Dona

“She still has him.”
― Bernardo E. Lopes, Dona