City of San Diego’s SeaWorld Ticket Giveaway Under Fire
PETA ‘Orca’ to Blast Tone-Deaf Abusement Park Promotion
For Immediate Release:
August 5, 2019
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
Today—as city staff are given free tickets to SeaWorld for Employee Appreciation Month—a costumed PETA “orca” will lead a lively protest of the notoriously cruel abusement park during San Diego’s “proclamation ceremony.”
When: Today at 12:30 p.m.
Where: At the intersection of Second Avenue and W. C Street, San Diego
“Scores of animals have died before their time at SeaWorld, and those who survive languish in tiny tanks, forced to perform circus-style tricks every day,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA asks all decent people to boycott this abusive operation.”
In nature, orcas swim as far as 140 miles in a day and bottlenose dolphins swim up to 60 miles a day, dive to depths of nearly 1,500 feet, and maintain dynamic relationships within a large social network. At SeaWorld, 140 dolphins are squeezed into just seven small tanks and can’t escape attacks from other frustrated, aggressive dolphins. A new veterinary report makes it clear that dolphins at all three SeaWorld parks have open wounds and extensive scarring on their faces and bodies, likely caused by trainers standing on their backs and faces during performances, which can damage their hearing, strain muscles and joints, and exacerbate the injuries caused by confinement to cramped tanks.
Last month, United Airlines ended its sale of SeaWorld tickets and removed all mention of the park from its United Vacations website, joining Virgin Holidays and Alaska, Delta, JetBlue, Southwest, Spirit, Sunwing, and WestJet airlines in cutting ties with the abusement park.
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 SeaWorldOfHurt.com or PETA.org.
