Thursday, 13 March 2014

We Have Assisted Rescue of Killer Whales. Challenging Seaworld

 Even without the help of  Extreme Animal Rights Activists, PETA, any Anti Cap people or even Blackfish, Seaworld manage to reel off either downright lies or extreme stretches of the truth that are easily contended. Why do they do it?

 
Here are Jacobs' unedited responses to CNN's questions I have left the links given by Seaworld intact so you can check for Seaworlds involvement yourself. 


CNN: In your statement, SeaWorld notes that Blackfish "withholds from viewers key facts about SeaWorld," including that SeaWorld has rescued, rehabilitated, and returned to the wild hundreds of wild animals: Do any of those animals include orcas?

SeaWorld: Yes, though killer whales do not beach with the same frequency as other species and when they do it is typically a last ditch effort at survival. Killer whales, like all stranded marine mammals, are generally gravely ill, injured, malnourished, dehydrated, very old or very young, and do not survive long on shore. Nonetheless, we've assisted whales many times, including killer whales. The largest whale to ever be rescued, rehabilitated and returned to the wild -- J.J. the orphaned gray whale calf -- was part of our rescue program. (See the attached paper from a biologist at the Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute (PDF).) You can read about our role in rescuing killer whales from Barnes Lake in Alaska here and our role in rescuing a killer whale named Springer here. We also assisted our colleagues at Dolfinarium in Holland with veterinary care and husbandry for an orphaned and hearing-impaired juvenile killer whale they rescued. SeaWorld was part of the team to help Luna, as well as a young killer whale stranded near Puerto Vallarta in Mexico. We also are regularly called upon to do pathology on beached whales that do not survive.

Now the truth and comparison

 Keiko. free for 5 years, was taught to catch fish, swam across an ocean alone met wild orca. Seaworld ridiculed the effort.

versus

JayJay - Jayjay was taken into SeaWorld for care. They mostly fed Jayjay and nursed her back to health. There was no efforts for re accustoming her to the ocean or special training done.  When it was time for release, SeaWorld simply returned Jayjay back into the sea when grey whales were passing by. There was no attempt to determine or locate Jay jay's actual family.  SeaWorld claims the transmitter for tracking Jayjay was ‘lost at the release’. You can see in the document they quote though it should have been on to monitor diving, feeding etc.  Because of this, Jayjay was never tracked. This seems rather odd, because any organization with a true intent to rehab and release successfully would plan ahead for that and have a dart tracker or such for a back up.  There was never any attempt to follow up on Jay jay. As soon as SeaWorld released her, that was it. It was unknown if Jayjay even survived past a couple of days at that point and no attempts to locate her by SeaWorld.

Barnes Lake Orcas  as you can see from the report submitted by Seaworld the last paragraph gives credit to those who helped and how they helped, stating
''Louisiana Pacific, Ketchikan
Air, The Marine World Foundation and Sea World provided financial
support. ''
Financial support is not what was indicated in Fred Jacobs statement. 

Springer - her story is below 10 years on she has her own calf and was adopted into a pod.



Seaworlds input on Springer -  SeaWorld wanted to see Springer taken captive. “The SeaWorld vet tried his best to find something wrong with Springer that would dictate that she be moved to a SeaWorld tank,”  SeaWorld veterinarian Jim McBain told The Seattle Times that, "We're still worried about the next step. Her condition is a concern. This is not a robust killer whale.” “She won’t survive out there. She needs to live in captivity.”
 Several aquariums – including SeaWorld – lobbied to have her brought into captivity, but fortunately an environmental group located legal documents  containing a 1976 agreement between SeaWorld and Washington State (a result of the Penn Cove fiasco), proving that SeaWorld is barred from participating in any capture of any orca in Washington waters. Full report here

Luna

Luna  needed assistance and help to get him back to his family. SeaWorld never lifted a finger to help Luna and eventually, this resulted in the young male going through a boat’s prop. As you can see the link provided is Luna's story not their input.
 The groups involved with Luna were Orca Conservancy, Earth Island Institute, the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation, OrcaLab, Veins of Life Watershed Society, Reunite Luna, DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada) and their main contractor,Vancouver Aquarium as the main contributors to the project. I am yet to find any mention of SeaWorld personnel, so whatever their input was, it must have been minuscule to none and not worthy of a mention anywhere.

 For those who do not know Luna's story the video below shows her life and her effort to make friends.




Pasquala 

Once again the link Seaworld provided shows no mention of them at all. 

Pasquala had the Mexican officials reach out to SeaWorld for help for her. SeaWorld said to give her to them and they’ll care for her. A baby killer whale at the centre of an international animal trafficking controversy has died at an aquarium in Mexico because it lacked its mother's milk after becoming stranded on a Pacific beach. Owners of the aquarium had warned that the whale, who they named Pascuala, would die if she were not sent abroad because there was no tank in Mexico big enough to hold her and she could not fend for herself at sea. But the government and environmentalists opposed a move from the aquarium in Nueva Vallarta because they feared it would set a precedent of animal trafficking from Mexico, they also wanted to rehabilitate rather than keep captive.  Mexico's environment agency said on Monday that the whale, also known as an orca, died on Sunday, two months after becoming stranded on the beach, because her immune system failed to develop due to a lack of milk and she was attacked by infection. The aquarium owners had wanted to send the whale to SeaWorld, an aquatic theme park in San Diego, California, which is home to seven other killer whales that live in a 26.5 million litre tank.Seaworld vets could have gone and spent time in Mexico but didn't.

Morgan
Lastly there is Morgan.

Again the link they provide states only this ''Yesterday evening, a very young, weakened, skinny and most likely ill orca of an estimated 3,5 meters was rescued in the north of the Netherlands near Lauwersoog. It has been captured and taken to the Dolfinarium Harderwijk where it is held at the moment in the treatment pools behind the large show-bassin (the dome) which are (of course) behind the scenes.

It's a female and it has eaten some pounds of fish during the night. The plan is to "treat the animal and release it back into the wild", but how that is going to be done remains to be seen. For now it's fingers crossed the little helpless thing survives.

It's been decades since the last orca was seen in Dutch waters, so this is really unusual...''

The statement says Seaworld 'assisted' their colleagues with Morgan if that is so how come she is listed on their animal inventory? How come she is held with their orca's in Loro Parque? How come they are monitoring her cycles to enable her to breed at a really young age? How come 4 related orca's went to Loro Parque on a breeding loan with nothing to breed with other than themselves, until Morgan arrived? 
 Alarmingly the vet has, perhaps inadvertently, revealed that Morgan has begun cycling – indicating that Loro Parque’s shameful tactic of keeping Morgan with the adult male Keto may lead to her being impregnated – resulting in a hybrid calf sooner rather than later.  Remember that the Dolfinarium Harderwijk claimed that Morgan was just 2 years old when they captured her in June 2010– making her 5 years old now that Loro Parque is trying to breed form her. Seaworld have stated that they supervise and monitor all going's on at Loro Parque and a Seaworld trainer is always present. For those not familiar with Morgan's story you can read all about her here  Free Morgan Foundation
 
The very end of that particular statement says We also are regularly called upon to do pathology on beached whales that do not survive.

The article they give as their example states - "It's very sad when a baby whale dies, but the amount of scientific information we are going to be able to get over the next 24 hours is going to be tremendous," Judy St. Leger, SeaWorld's director of pathology and research, said Friday before the tests began. St. Leger, who has studied killer whales for 13 years, was in New York and participated in the work on the young whale by phone.

Read more here: http://www.adn.com/2013/09/07/3062263/dead-killer-whale-calf-is-getting.html#storylink=cpy

So once again, once the evidence is looked at Seaworld have never released a killer whale, neither from their tanks or in the wild. They need no help from anyone to make themselves look like the liars they are.
















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