When i was a child, it was always a great day to be able to go visit Sealand of the Pacific near my house in Victoria, B.C. Seeing sea life underwater doing what they do and then emerging to see the seals playing only a couple feet away was a pretty cool feeling. And of course the main attraction, the killer whales, Tilikum, Haida and Nootka! Now this was around 20 years ago but today, one of the whales, Tilikum has made the spotlight but in a bad way.
On February 24, he killed one of the trainers at Florida's Seaworld. Sadly, this is not the first time he has taken a life. When he was still at Sealand in Victoria, he killed one of the trainers who fell into the pool in 1992. Just before Sealand was closed, he was moved to Seaworld only to have a body found in his tank in 1999 (but appears the guy snuck into the tank, so can you really blame the whale?). Tilikum is a bull orca who was captured near Iceland in November 1983 at about two years of age. So he has been in captivity for almost 30 years and most of his life.
Now before PETA gets going on the "You should not put any animal in captivity" tirade they are known for but technically have a good point (and will leave it at that). Lets look at the mammal itself.
Orca's feed exclusively on fish, particularly salmon, and other populations hunt marine mammals such as sea lions, seals, walruses and even large whales. Killer whales are regarded as an apex predator as they have no natural predators. Now if something hunts other animals larger than humans and is an APEX Predator, then we are on the menu like everything else. These animals are not domesticated, they are wild animals taken from their life in the ocean and put into a big tank for the rest of us to enjoy. It is not a matter of IF, it is a matter of WHEN something like this will occur.
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