Sir Roger Moore On Breached Orca Video: Stay Away From Marine Parks

007 Actor Makes Statement After Captive Orca at Loro Parque Beaches Herself

For Immediate Release:
June 9, 2016

Contact:
Moira Colley 202-483-7382

Sir Roger Moore has a message for summer tourists: Don’t go to parks that have captive orcas. Following an incident in which a SeaWorld-owned captive orca named Morgan was filmed at Loro Parque aquarium in Tenerife, Spain, having beached herself, lying motionless on a concrete slab, the legendary actor spoke out against abusement parks that imprison these animals. In a statement given to PETA U.K., he says the following:

How much longer must highly intelligent and self-aware individuals like Morgan suffer before we understand that other species are not on this Earth for our amusement? It’s clear to anyone with a brain and an ounce of compassion that marine parks are nothing more than concrete prisons which cause captive marine animals a world of suffering. Orcas at these facilities are forced to toil day after day, repeating the same endless tasks with no choice in the matter and no means of escape – how utterly miserable their lives must be. The only way to end the abuse of captive orcas and other marine animals is to stay away from and speak out against facilities that keep them captive – and I urge everyone to join me in doing just that.

Morgan was taken from the wild in 2010 when she was ill, under the condition that she be returned to her ocean home when she recovered—but instead, she was transferred to Loro Parque, where she is forced to perform on indefinite loan from SeaWorld and has been repeatedly attacked by incompatible orcas dozens of times a day. She has also been caught on video smashing her head into a gate over and over again.

Despite ending its captive-orca breeding program, 22 orcas remain confined to barren, concrete tanks at SeaWorld, where, just like Morgan, they suffer from severe emotional distress as well as chronic infections, which have been a contributing factor in more than half the orca deaths at its parks in the last 30 years.

Moore joins a growing list of celebrities—including Jason Biggs, Kathy Najimy, Joanna Krupa, Marisa Miller, and Laura Vandervoort—who have teamed up with PETA or PETA U.K., whose mottos read, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment.”

For more information, please visit PETA.org.