By Steve Lemeshko

Are aquariums and zoos ethical in the 21st century? While this question has been debated for a long time, certain species—especially those with complex social structures and high intelligence—are particularly ill-suited for captivity. At the center of this debate have long been orcas, apex predators, and social, highly intelligent, and culturally complex souls of the ocean.

SeaWorld has become the symbol of the controversy for mistreating the animals. You don’t have to look far to notice that something is inherently wrong. For example, 100% of captive male orcas have a condition called collapsed dorsal fins, which, in the wild, is associated with ill health.

Dorsal fin collapse in orca in SeaWorld. Credit: Kyle Fox, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

According to the PETA’s A Summary of the Effects of Captivity on Orcas report,

SeaWorld's largest tanks hold 0.0001% of the water orcas naturally traverse in a single day, preventing them from high-speed swimming and restricting them to an environment more akin to a bathtub than an ocean.
The confinement distorts their acoustic environment and disrupts communication and social behaviors.
While wild orcas have stable, lifelong relationships, captivity separates families and creates artificial groupings.

All of the following leads to stress-related behaviors, such as chewing on metal gates and concrete walls, aggression, and lying motionless on the tank floor.

SeaWorld's now-defunct orca breeding program epitomized the cruelty of captivity. PETA summarizes these breeding practices as “drugged, dragged out of the water, and raped.” Seaworld bred orcas at an unnaturally young age, forcefully impregnated them under sedation, and stole the surviving calves from their mothers—a process that destroys natural bonds and causes stress akin to psychological trauma. Orcas were also shuffled between parks to avoid inbreeding, making stress and social instability even worse.

In 2016, public pressure led SeaWorld to end its notorious orca breeding program, showing our growing compassion toward distressed animals in captivity across the globe—concerns that are in accordance with the growing field of compassionate conservation that prioritizes animal welfare. Among many generators of public pressure, this shift was influenced at least in part by Blackfish, a documentary that used narrative empathy to highlight the story of Tilikum. Through powerful imagery, the authors personalized the suffering of captive orcas in the story of a single victim, from his capture as a calf and separation from the family to decades of confinement.

Despite ending orca breeding, SeaWorld continues to exploit cetaceans: (1) orcas still perform in shows, and (2) breeding programs for other cetaceans, such as dolphins and beluga whales, haven’t been stopped.

We invite you to watch the story of Martha, the beluga whale who was kidnapped off the coast of Manitoba, Canada, in 1988.

As PETA prompts, “Imagine Martha’s suffering and grief as her babies were taken from her.”

Similar is the story of Ariel, the bottlenose dolphin, who has been trapped for 30 years in the SeaWorld and used as a breeding machine. Read her story here.

The stories of Tilikum, Martha, and Ariel break through the phenomenon of psychic numbing, where the scale of suffering becomes overwhelming and abstract. By focusing on individual victims, these narratives tap into our capacity for empathy and action.

The ethical treatment of cetaceans is not just about conservation—it’s about acknowledging their intrinsic value as sentient beings. Consider the story of Ota Benga, a Congo pygmy man brought to the U.S. and displayed in the "Monkey House" at the Bronx Zoo in 1906. Like the captive orcas, Ota Benga was denied his dignity and autonomy for the sake of entertainment. His exhibition was supported by Madison Grant, a eugenicist most known for his book, The Passing of the Great Race. The public outrage eventually ended this practice, yet both cases reflect the moral failing of reducing sentient beings—human or animal—to spectacles for amusement.

*Ota Benga at the Bronx Zoo. Credit: PD.*

As Marc Bekoff, a professor emeritus of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder, writes in his Psychology Today article,

I look forward to the day when venues like SeaWorld, including terrestrial zoos, morph into sanctuaries in which the animals' lives are put first and foremost, […] and human entertainment go out the door totally. It is vitally important to keep working toward these goals, and as the late Gretchen Wyler, a longtime animal advocate once noted, “Cruelty can't stand the spotlight.”

Just as society now condemns human zoos—a practice once accepted as entertainment—we must recognize that keeping cetaceans as performers is a relic of the past. We need an ethical phase-out model, such as the one proposed by Whale and Dolphin Conservation:

No performances
No breeding
No wild captures
No trade between facilities
Improved welfare conditions
Support for sanctuaries

While releasing all captive cetaceans into the wild may not be possible, sanctuaries provide a compassionate middle ground and allow for more natural behaviors.

Ending marine mammal captivity won’t happen overnight, but incremental changes can build momentum. Personal stories and public pressure have already led to significant victories. Society has the capacity to confront its moral blind spots, so our responsibility is to shine the spotlight of shared compassion on where cruelty thrives and, in doing so, create a more ethical future.

Additional resources:

Of Orcas and Men – Watch the YouTube version of the book

The Emotional Intelligence of Orcas – An interesting article on orca emotional intelligence

The full citations of reports are:

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. A Summary of the Effects of Captivity on Orcas. 2021, www.peta.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/SeaWorldCruelty.pdf.

Whale and Dolphin Conservation. Ethically Phasing Out Captivity. 2022, https://uk.whales.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2022/09/WDC-Captivity-Phase-Out.pdf.

For further reading, see the following articles:

Northern Spotted Owl vs. Barred Owl: The Ethical Conundrum of Compassionate Conservation / November 7, 2024

How do we know what animals are really feeling? / November 5, 2024

Communicating Trans-Species Empathy: An Interview with Amy Donovan / March 18, 2022

Ethics, Compassion, and Captivity of Cetaceans