Video footage of a captive SeaWorld killer whale beaching itself on a concrete slab at the side of a pool at a Tenerife tourist park, has prompted activists to call for the whale’s release back to the wild.
The disturbing footage shows the killer whale, called Morgan, fully out of the water and almost motionless at Loro Parque.
The footage was captured by an anonymous member of the Dolphin Project, who campaigned against the captivity of dolphins and produced the Academy-award winning documentary “The Cove.”
Morgan was said to have remained still for 10 minutes, moving occasionally, while some tourists stopped to take selfies with her.
Although cetacean strandings aren’t unheard of, this particular case has caused some confusion in scientists as to why.
Orcas are highly social species and rely on the other family members to hunt, protect and interact in order to survive. Entire pods of orca have been known to beach themselves, following distress calls from an injured member, prompting the pod to follow alongside, resulting in a mass beaching.
Solitary whales have also been known to beach themselves, but only when fallen ill or in extreme distress. However, solitary beachings of the species are generally unheard of and considered a rare phenomenon.
The dolphin project said while it could not give a reason for Morgan’s behavior, “the juxtaposition of a previously-wild orca against the stark backdrop of the park’s performance area is unsettling.”
Loro Parque had released a statement regarding the comment saying “it was absurd to draw conclusions from a few minutes of footage of Morgan,” and claimed activists were interpreting the images “simply with a anti-zoo objective” and “voluntary stranding is a natural behavior for wild orcas.”
“The orcas at Loro Parque are trained to leave the water on their own accord. This behavior is used for manifold purposes, for example, for presenting the animals to the public, for conducting corporal check-ups, for inspecting their blowholes, as well as for testing hearing abilities of the orcas.
“During their free time, sometimes animals get on stage, even go sliding from side to side. This is done quite naturally, often associated with game dynamics.
“Pretending that’s a stress test shows an enormous ignorance about the behavior of these animals.”
There has been many other instances of orcas displaying bizarre behavior in similar water parks all over the world. SeaWorld owns all six orcas at Loro Parque and are the main culprits of featuring large orcas in small enclosures. Last year a video showed Tilikum floating at the top of his tank, while San Antonio SeaWorld orca were said to have severe dental trauma from allegedly chewing and gnawing their tanks due to boredom.
Lincoln O’Barry, of Dolphin Project, told Sky News “when you put a sonic creature in a concrete box, they stop using their primary sense which is sonar, they are just basically bored. When you put them in an unnatural environment, they are going to behave unnaturally.”
Since the footage had emerged, a #FREEMORGAN campaign on Twitter has started up and is looking for all the support they can get.
The FreeMorganFoundation, a charity dedicated to release Morgan, stated that she was captured by Dolfinarium, a marine mammal park in Harderwijk, the Netherlands, in 2010, under a ‘rescue, rehabilitation and release’ permit.
However, a following assessment after her capture by an “independent team of experts” stated that she was not suitable to be released back into the wild, and has been at Loro Parque since November 2011.
Kenneth Balcomb, the executive director of the Centre for Whale Research stated that “the Loro Parque statement is simply spin-doctoring in service of the usual fantasy that it is ‘normal’ for such amazing animals to be used for financial gain in captive entertainment.
“That is an astonishing demonstration of behavior! While these whales are trained to slide out for some veterinary inspections and procedures, this apparently voluntary slide out appears to be more of a demonstration of messaging … who really knows what is going on inside of that whale’s amazing brain?
“The most striking features of the video for me were the extreme fatness of the body, and the slow motion head and tail lifts as if posing. I would not consider either of these features normal for free ranging killer whales in the Pacific Northwest.”
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