Time to Pop the Cork for Corky! National ‘Boycott SeaWorld’ Day to Rally for Mother Orca’s Freedom
For Immediate Release:
July 20, 2023
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
Carrying giant posters showing an orca stuffed into a champagne bottle and crying, “Let Corky be free in 2023!” PETA supporters will descend on SeaWorld on Sunday to mark “Boycott SeaWorld” Day and call for the release of Corky, the longest-held captive orca in the world, who was sold into the entertainment industry after being torn from her family and ocean home off the coast of British Columbia in 1969. Corky was used for years as a breeding machine, but not one of her babies survived past 47 days. Her last stillborn baby was found at the bottom of a concrete tank at SeaWorld.
When: Sunday, July 23, 11 a.m.
Where: At the intersection of Sea World Drive and Sea World Way, San Diego
“Corky has known only misery for 54 years, with no life other than to swim in endless circles in a tiny, barren tank at SeaWorld,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “She must be sent to a seaside sanctuary where she could dive deep, swim fast, and even possibly reunite with her family.”
Corky is the only surviving orca who was captured before Lolita, an orca kept for more than five decades in a cramped tank at the Miami Seaquarium, which announced plans earlier this year to move her back to her home waters in the Pacific Northwest.
Sunday’s rally at SeaWorld San Diego is one of three to be held at SeaWorld’s U.S. parks for “Boycott SeaWorld” Day. Others will take place at SeaWorld San Antonio on Saturday and SeaWorld Orlando on Monday. PETA also encourages everyone to watch the groundbreaking documentary Blackfish and take action to urge SeaWorld to stop breeding dolphins and whales.
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 PETA.org, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
