SeaWorld Does Not Educate

P1. Going to SeaWorld does not serve any educational value, it is simply a place of entertainment. Why else would the whales and dolphins perform tricks and do flips in front of the audiences? These marine mammals don’t enjoy doing shows, they are forced to. These kinds of tricks are not natural for them to do, hence the reason why you would never see them do it out in the wild. Marine parks such as SeaWorld spread false information to the public to make people think that keeping them in captivity is good.

P2. If you think back to when you were in elementary school, chances are that you went on a field trip to some type of marine park like SeaWorld, or a local aquarium. These trips were funded by the schools and it was a yearly routine to take the students for an educational experience. In the article, “SeaWorld Doesn’t ‘Educate’ Students” written by Zach Affolter, he talks about how some elementary school teachers are arguing that their students do not take any valuable lessons from going to places like SeaWorld. When you bring young children to a place like this they are only focused on the sea animals themselves, not about the facts they are being told. Especially when the sea mammals are performing amazing tricks, that seems to be the only thing students will remember about their trip to SeaWorld. But if they do remember something that one of the orca trainers said, it will most likely be false information. SeaWorld tries to cover up for their wrongdoings by having them convince the audience that things that they have caused are natural and happen to whales everywhere. For example, most whales at SeaWorld have a collapsed dorsal fin due to their confinement and shallow pools. SeaWorld will tell the public that the collapsed dorsal fins are very common in whales and are seen in whales all over the world. This is them lying to the public to try and cover up for their actions. They refuse to tell the truth about their sea mammals because that will result in less people coming to their parks.

P3. SeaWorld makes it seem like the animals are living great lives in these pools because the trainers only talk about positive things during the shows. They do not mention how the whales are being starved and are only getting food during the shows. Instead they tell the audience that whales love to eat the dead fish and that these dead fish are what their diet mainly consists of. The trainers talk about how well the whales interact with one another and how they play and swim together all day long. They do not mention how the whales are isolated most of the time because they fight each other out of stress and irritation. SeaWorld makes it look like living in these pools are the whales natural place to live and that they are actually happy living there. The children do not even know where the natural habitat actually is for most of these animals, they just think it is natural for them to be swimming in these tiny pools for the rest of their lives. By being told all this false information and having them focus on the shows and tricks, they are not learning anything educational about sea animals, which is supposed to be SeaWorld’s whole purpose. This causes children to believe false information and not see a problem with animal captivity. They claim that they have educated over nine million children on the values of conservation, which is a total lie. Going to SeaWorld serves no educational purpose to anyone, instead it is a place for entertainment and lies.

P4. SeaWorld claims that it is a place to educate the public about the lives of sea animals in a way we would never be able to without them. If they say they are more about education than entertainment, then why do they only choose to hold the animals that can perform the most tricks and can be easily trained? In the article, “If SeaWorld Is About Educating The Public, Why Doesn’t It Have Any Porpoises?” by David Kirby he talks about the fact that SeaWorld does not hold any porpoises in any of its parks. Porpoises are members of the dolphin family that can be found off the coasts of many SeaWorld operating states. So if these sea mammals live so close to the parks, then how come we aren’t learning about them in the parks? According to Courtney Vail, campaigns and program manager at Whale and Dolphin Conservation, it is because they don’t have that ‘crowd appeal’ that other sea mammals like the bottle-nose dolphin does. Industries consider porpoises undesirable because they won’t draw in crowds like the massive killer whales do. It might also be because they are shy and less acrobatic, meaning that they can’t really be trained to perform shows. This shows that SeaWorld only chooses animals that will get the biggest audience, because the shows are the number one focus. Also it shows that they do not really care about which animals they do not keep, because they only keep the ones that are going to make the most money for the company.

P5. The only way children can really learn about these sea animals is through research, documentaries, and marine biology. Having them go to SeaWorld to watch whales do flips and dolphins play with a ball serves no educational purpose whatsoever. The only purpose of SeaWorld is the entertainment for us and the way we get this entertainment is by capturing animals and forcing them to live miserable unhealthy lives in isolation. People going to SeaWorld in hopes of an educational experience, such as schools, end up only getting a show that was of no educational value, just entertainment and false information. This causes children to believe what they are told and to keep going back to SeaWorld to see “Shamu do his back flips”. They don’t realize that these sea animals are suffering and they do not learn anything about the way these animals actually live in the wild. Overall, SeaWorld does not educate the public, it merely entertains those who are willing to believe their lies.

Works Cited

Affolter, Zach. “SeaWorld Doesn’t ‘Educate’ Students.” The Dodo. N.p., 21 Oct. 2014. Web. 26 Mar. 2017.

Kirby, David. “If SeaWorld Is About Educating the Public, Why Doesn’t It Have Any Porpoises?” TakePart. N.p., 13 May 2014. Web. 26 Mar. 2017.