SeaWorld ‘Christmas Celebration’ to Draw PETA Protest

Demonstrators Will Decry Park’s Cruel and Anything-but-Festive Record of Orca Suffering

For Immediate Release:
December 5, 2014

Contact:
Alexis Sadoti 202-483-7382

A throng of PETA “Santas” and an activist in an orca costume will converge on SeaWorld on Saturday to protest the opening of the park’s Christmas Celebration event. The PETA members, toting festive holiday signs, will remind parkgoers that the animals imprisoned at SeaWorld experience anything but holiday cheer while held captive in barren concrete tanks.

When:   Saturday, December 6, 12 p.m.

Where:  SeaWorld, N. Ellison Drive and Westover Hills Boulevard, San Antonio

“As sponsors put SeaWorld on their ‘naughty lists’ left and right, PETA is calling on the public to do the same,” says PETA Foundation Deputy General Counsel Delcianna Winders. “Only a total Scrooge would support confining far-ranging orcas to bathtub-like tanks, where they can only bite the cage bars in frustration.”

After the release of Blackfish—which reveals how orcas at SeaWorld are deprived of everything that’s natural and important to them, leading them to become frustrated and exhibit deadly aggression—attendance at SeaWorld parks dropped, sponsors cut ties with the park, and the company was named one of the worst in the U.S. in a Consumerist poll. At least 25 orcas have died in U.S. SeaWorld facilities since 1986—and not one died of old age. PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—is calling on SeaWorld to fund the creation of coastal sanctuaries where the orcas can live in as natural a setting as possible.

For more information, please visit SeaWorldOfHurt.com.