Video: Shocking Orca Attack at SeaWorld Filmed by Park Visitor
For Immediate Release:
August 5, 2022
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
Today, just one day after orca Nakai died at SeaWorld after being held there for 21 years, PETA received eyewitness footage from a SeaWorld visitor revealing a violent attack among orcas this morning, resulting in a serious wound to at least one of the animals. In response, PETA has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), calling on the agency to investigate the abusement park for apparent federal Animal Welfare Act violations over housing incompatible animals together, a practice the company has been warned against in the past.
PETA points out that Nakai was involved in a similar incident when he was kept in a tiny concrete tank with incompatible orcas in 2012 and sustained puncture marks and lost a chunk of his jaw in an attack by two of them.
The SeaWorld visitor told PETA, “We all immediately saw blood soaking the water which triggered my [nine] year old daughter to start crying. We would see bite marks [and] fresh wounds all over the side of the whale. Every couple seconds two more orcas would jump out of the water to continuing [sic] attacking the hurt orca.” In the video—which appears to show the injured orca beaching themself to get away from the aggressors—a child can be heard asking, “How is [the orca] still alive?” and “I thought they hug each other, not fight each other.”
“In two days, one orca has died and another has been attacked by other frustrated, closely confined orcas, resulting in a serious injury—and young children were witnesses to the carnage,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on the USDA to investigate SeaWorld for holding animals in conditions so stressful they would lead to horrific attacks and reminds families to stay away from any park that imprisons orcas or other animals.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview.
For more information on PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit SeaWorldOfHurt.com or follow PETA on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
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