PETA to Protest Against SeaWorld’s Rose Parade Float

Theme Park’s Float Promotes Animal Abuse, Says Group

For Immediate Release:
December 27, 2013

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

A costumed “orca” representing all the captive souls at SeaWorld will protest outside the Irwindale building, where SeaWorld’s Rose Parade float is being stored, on Saturday. The orca’s point? That the float—which depicts free-living orcas frolicking in the open sea—bears no resemblance to an orca’s life of confinement at SeaWorld, where the far-ranging top predators are locked in tiny concrete tanks and forced to perform circus-style tricks for a reward of dead fish.

When:   Saturday, December 28, 12 noon

Where:  Fiesta Parade Floats, 16016 Avenida Padilla (at the intersection of Avenida Padilla and Irwindale Avenue), Irwindale

“A company that rips orca babies away from their loving mothers and ships them from park to park to sell tickets doesn’t belong in a family event,” says Lisa Lange, PETA senior vice president of communications and a lifelong Pasadena resident. “Rose Parade officials should be ashamed to promote SeaWorld at a time when the whole world has seen its history of animal abuse.”

Since the hit documentary Blackfish revealed how orcas at SeaWorld—many of whom were rounded up rodeo-style and torn away from their family pods in the ocean—are kept in chemically treated waters where they suffer physically and psychologically from the constant deprivation of captivity, SeaWorld’s attendance has dropped. PETA will be at the Rose Parade on January 1 to protest the park’s participation in the event.

For more information, please visit SeaWorldOfHurt.com.