Orcas at Seaworld

"Life is as dear to a mute creature as it is to man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not die, so do other creatures." Dalai Lama

That orca you see at seaworld is not an orca. 

It looks just like one but the captive orca is an artificial representation of the real animal. Everything that constitutes an orca has been taken from it, nothing it does is what an orca should be doing. It has been conditioned to eat dead fish and gelatin rather than hunt live prey in the wild, it has been bribed into performing tricks which is an unnatural behaviour and imprisoned in a pool rather than swimming up to 100 miles a day in the wild.

Orcas at Seaworld spend the majority of their time floating at the surface of their tanks, with no shade from the sun. Orcas in the wild spend up to 95% of their time submerged in the depths of the ocean. Seaworld's deepest tank is only 40 feet, not nearly deep enough for them. Due to this the orcas have constant sunburn, which is covered up with black zinc oxide.

Orcas in the wild have an average life expectancy of 30-50 years and their estimated maximum life span is 70-100 years. The median  age of orcas in captivity is only 9.

In captivity all adult males have collapsed dorsal fins, the sign of an unhealthy orca. This is due to the unnatural environment they are kept in and is very rarely seen in wild orcas.

Marine parks claim that first hand experience with captive animals is essential to build respect for nature. Scientific studies say otherwise: people show the same appreciation for nature whether going to marine parks or not. 

Seaworld has recently claimed that they "need to keep orcas in captivity to save them."

No large whales like blue or humpback whales have ever been held in captivity and yet their numbers are now rebounding in the wild after being hunted close to extinction. It would appear that the best conservation strategy is the most humane- all we needed to do was stop killing them.