Primatologist Jane Goodall has weighed in on the controversy surrounding SeaWorld, saying the aquarium should be shut down.
“They definitely should be closed down,”
Goodall said in an interview with The Huffington Post earlier this month.
The company has been struggling with public backlash, low attendance, and a plummeting stock price since the July 2013 release of CNN’s documentary “Blackfish.” The film was critical of the treatment of the company’s animals and covered the 2010 death of trainer Dawn Brancheau, who was killed by an orca, and an earlier death of a trainer in Spain. SeaWorld has refuted many of the complaints against it, saying the criticism it has received has been exaggerated.
Goodall said that keeping whales, dolphins, and porpoises in tanks interferes with their communication because the sound waves they use to communicate bounce off the walls.
“When they are contained in these tanks . . . that is acoustical hell,” she told The Post.
SeaWorld disagreed with the claim, saying in a statement on its website and linked to on Twitter that the tanks are designed to keep noise levels quieter than the ambient ocean.
"Jane Goodall is a respected scientist and advocate for the world’s primates, but we couldn’t disagree more with her on this," Becca Bides, a SeaWorld spokesperson, said in a statement to HuffPost. "Zoos and marine mammal parks like SeaWorld allow people to experience animals in a way that is inspiring and educational."
But Goodall disagrees with confinement of the animals.
“It’s not only that they’re really big, highly intelligent and social animals so that the capture and confinement in itself is cruel,” she said, adding also that “they have emotions like ours.”
Amid the controversy, SeaWorld recently has lost sponsors including Southwest Airlines and Mattel, which said it will not renew its license to produce a
SeaWorld-themed Barbie, CNN reported.
Last year, Goodall petitioned Vancouver to cease keeping whales,
dolphins, and porpoises in captivity, The Orlando Sentinel reported.
Twitter users commented on Goodall’s stance.
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