Media Invite: Edie Falco Voices the Mother Orca in New Virtual Reality View of SeaWorld

In PETA’s Stunning New Empathy-Building Experience, Viewers Will Go Underwater to Swim With Grieving Mother Orca

For Immediate Release:
June 9, 2015

Contact:
Shakira Croce 202-483-7382

People in San Francisco will be able to see—and feel—SeaWorld’s cruelty to orcas for themselves. On June 10, PETA will be in San Francisco to launch its new state-of-the-art (and beyond!) “I, Orca” empathy project, which uses wireless Google virtual reality (VR) goggles to immerse participants in a world where they can swim freely in the ocean with their orca family. They will also meet an orca mother, voiced by Edie Falco, who still mourns the baby who was stolen from her decades ago and sent to SeaWorld, where he has been sentenced to a miserable life in captivity. A non-VR video of the project is available here.

Where:           The east corner of Fifth and Market streets, San Francisco

When:             Wednesday, June 10, 12 p.m.

“This summer, PETA wants people to experience for themselves exactly why no one with a heart would go near SeaWorld,” says PETA Executive Vice President and mother Tracy Reiman. “‘I, Orca’ gives the first-ever whale’s-eye view of what SeaWorld means to baby orcas and their mothers: a lifetime of suffering and loneliness that’s an ocean away from the freedom and family that they enjoy in nature.”

As Falco’s mother orca says of her son, “They have stolen his life, torn us apart, and put him in a concrete box filled with chemically treated water. … He’s been robbed of his family’s love and all the joys of the ocean, where he belongs.” PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—is calling on SeaWorld, whose attendance dropped a whopping 12 percent last year, to develop ocean sanctuaries where the orcas could finally have some semblance of a normal life.

This is a make-believe undersea experience, but in reality, all orcas now living in captivity were either torn away from their natural ocean homes and families or born into a marine-animal prison they can’t escape.

For more information, please visit SeaWorldOfHurt.com.