Krysten Ritter Gets Trapped In A Tank In New Anti-SeaWorld Campaign
Krysten Ritter is making waves in a new campaign urging SeaWorld to release their orcas to seaside sanctuaries.
The “Jessica Jones” star appears pressed up against the walls of an aquarium tank in a video produced by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, posted on Facebook Thursday.
“SeaWorld has vowed to end their breeding program, but it’s simply not enough,” Ritter says in the clip. “Orcas are highly evolved, emotional, intelligent creatures who should not be confined in this kind of captivity. It’s the equivalent of a human living their life in a bathtub.”
SeaWorld has long drawn the condemnation of animal advocates who say that life in a tank is a cruel, stressful fate for animals as large and intelligent as orcas. And after the documentary “Blackfish” — which painted a chilling picture of SeaWorld — was released in 2013, public support for the parks plummeted and attendance shrank drastically.
PETA is not asking SeaWorld to simply release their whales into the open ocean — a fate that would likely not end well for animals used to living with human assistance. Instead, they are requesting that the orcas go to a “sea sanctuary” — meaning an outdoor, enclosed area of natural sea water providing much more room than their current tanks and mimicking their natural environment as closely as possible.
The proposed set-up would likely be similar to a sanctuary currently being built for the dolphins of Baltimore’s National Aquarium, which are slated to move in by 2020.
SeaWorld rejected the idea of sea pens last year, with a spokesperson telling The Huffington Post that the unpredictable environment of such a place — as compared to tightly-controlled tanks — would be potentially hazardous for the whales. Marine biologist and sea sanctuary proponent Naomi Rose dismissed that argument as “off-the-charts irrational.”
Krysten Ritter Gets Trapped In A Tank In New Anti-SeaWorld Campaign
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