Blackfish

In the documentary, Blackfish, viewers learned that Sea World got their orca whales as any other marine life facility: They hunted them. Hunters would track families of whales and, originally, they deliberately took the babies. They were told it was merely for the shipping costs, but…they took a mother’s children. One of the workers recalled crying as he captured them. He hated hearing the whales crying out to one another because he knew what they must have been feeling in those moments. “It’s like kidnapping a little kid away from a mother” he said. It has been proven that orcas are very capable of feeling strong emotions. In fact, they are more equipped than humans are, since they have a part of the brain that develops emotions farther than a human's brain.

A lot of the trainers that worked with the whales claimed that their initial reaction to working with them was a great experience. They built a relationship with the whales and they felt as thought they grew up together. However, this was not always the case. In Sealand, here had been a trainers who would use a technique that involved punishment and the withholding food, which, in the long run, could seriously abuse the whales whether it was by the hand of the trainer or by another frustrated whale. This had become common and eventually, due to the frustration and possible psychosis of the whale, there was an accident that resulted in the death of an employee. Another instant that involved the same whale, occurred when he lunged at another trainer, attempting to pull her into the tank. There were over seventy similar instances.  After such occurrences, it became more clear that the only relationship that the trainers had was based on food.

The main purpose of this film is to show just how wrong it is to keep these whales in captivity. People against the captivity of the whales argued that captivity caused whales to become unpredictable. What’s more is that these whales had spent a great deal of time in these tanks so some argued that it could be because of this large amount of time that they would have become hostile. There hasn't been any record of an orca showing aggression in the wild. The only reason why they are now is because of their frustration of their captivity.

(If you're interested in watching this documentary, you can find it on Netflix)