Former Sea World Employee Speaks Out
A former employee of SeaWorld in San Diego, Sarah Fischbeck, is speaking out against the constant abuse towards the animal attractions at SeaWorld. She worked as a quality diver for six years with the company after graduating high school in 2007. She also worked jobs for cleaning tanks and performing maintenance on the tanks.
She told TheDodo.com, “If people knew what I know, or saw what I have seen, they wouldn’t sell another ticket,”
Sarah Fishbeck told TheDodo.com about the constant abuse the animals at SeaWorld, the most abusive case being the Orcas. Due to captivity in these small tanks, their behavior is always becoming more and more aggressive, especially to other Orcas, stated Fishbeck
“You’d be diving at the bottom of the tanks and you’d find these long strips of what looked like black rubber,” she explained, “and it was skin they’d peeled off each other.” “We had divers take whale skin home to their families all the time as souvenirs,” Fishbeck added.
Although, it is not just the Orcas who are receiving constant abuse. “Those Magellanic penguins have been suffering for years because the visitors come and they throw pennies in the pool.” said Fishbeck “They don’t know any better — they see something shiny, they’re going to eat it,” she stated. “They have penguin surgeries all the time [to remove the objects from the birds] … it’s horrible.”
The dolphins at SeaWorld are as well suffering from captive aggression, Fishbeck claims that it can get quite severe. A dolphin named beaker was swimming with the whales when the whales started to push them around. They rammed her against the wall causing her jaw to break. She was then left to have a permanently upturned beak. Fischbeck said she believes the aggression problem is partially due to SeaWorld’s unnatural breeding program, which upsets the natural social order and leads male dolphins to act out.
Former trainers at Sea World, Dr.Jeffrey Ventre and John Hargrove both confirmed that Fishbeck’s claims were what they had both experienced as well. In disagreement to the statements, SeaWorld claims that these were “a complete distortion of the facts.”
SeaWorld also claims, “The fact is that SeaWorld is highly regulated by the U.S. federal government with frequent inspections by federal veterinarians and other government officials,” Aimée Jeansonne Becka, senior director for corporate communications at SeaWorld, said. “In addition, we are accredited by the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, which has said that SeaWorld is ‘meeting or exceeding the highest standard of animal care and welfare of any zoological organization in the world.”
I didn’t know that they abuse the animals. It’s so sad. 🙁
Great article but it is so sad hearing about these animals.
Great story it’s very sad that beaker the dolphin broke his jaw. #Pray4beaker
I really enjoyed reading about the Former Sea World Employee Speaks Out.
That was a great article it shows how Seaworld trainers are not very nice and that they abuse their animals.This article was very interesting I really liked it keep up the good work.
This is super informational such a good article good job Samantha those poor animals.
This was a very nice article. It helped us understand more about SeaWorld.
This article is very informative. It is sad that the Sea World trainers abuse the animals. Great Job!
This article made me realize that it will be better to let animals in the nature and not in captivity because they are not made for this way of life. Thank you for working on this subject.
I’m glad that the former employee spoke out, hopefully that’s the first step to people actually taking action.
Great article.
if that last paragraph is true, then every zoo or aquarium is worse than them.
I enjoyed this article because it shows that there are people out there that care about animals.