‘Crying Dolphin’ to ‘Stand Up’ Against Ludacris’ SeaWorld Performance

For Immediate Release:
February 23, 2023

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Armed with a sign reading, “What’s My Fantasy? A Life Outside of SeaWorld!” a costumed “crying dolphin”—flanked by a pod of PETA supporters and members of the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida—will rally against Ludacris’ concert at SeaWorld on Sunday, putting the rapper on blast for supporting the abusement park.

“Ludacris is using the marine park as a money maker, despite being informed that dolphins and whales at SeaWorld are confined to cramped tanks with nothing to do but swim in circles and lash out at each other in frustration,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA will be there fast and furious to let the public know that supporting marine prisons is ludicrous.”

In nature, dolphins swim up to 60 miles per day in family pods, but at SeaWorld facilities in the U.S., over 100 of them are confined to just seven cramped, barren tanks. Dolphins are kept in artificial social groups, so aggression among them is common, and in SeaWorld’s breeding program, male dolphins are masturbated, and females are taken out of the water and sometimes drugged so they can’t fight back while staff members shove tubes filled with semen into their uteruses. More than 40 orcas and over 500 other dolphins and whales have died on SeaWorld’s watch so far, and PETA is pushing it to release the animals in its parks to seaside sanctuaries, where they could swim longer distances and engage in other natural behavior.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.