Marine Animal Captivity Essay

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There are more than 500 orcas, dolphins and other members of the dolphin family held in captivity in the United States. Before The Marine Mammal Protection act of 1972 was passed, any organization or company was allowed to take from the wild, import, and breed marine mammals. Once this act passed organizations and companies had to apply for a permit to take or import marine mammals. The main holder of captive marine mammals is SeaWorld. The effects of marine mammal captivity reduces the animal's life expectancy, alters their behavior and jeopardizes their overall health. Knowing this can help people understand what effects we have on their lives in captivity. One effect that keeping marine mammals captive has been on their life expectancy.…show more content…
Being enclosed for the entirety of their lives they start to have psychological problems. How would you feel if you went from being able to travel the world to living in your bathtub in the middle of nowhere without your family? That’s what these animals go through. They are forced to perform shows all day every day for the entertainment of humans. Cetaceans (whale, dolphin, and porpoise family) are very social creatures, they are the second most intelligent animals on earth. They are second to humans. Once they are born into a pod they stay with that pod for life. Some calves have been known to stop eating, starving themselves to death if their mother passes away. Each pod has there one vocal language meaning that if another orca tried to join another pod they would not be able to communicate because they have a different language. When they take orcas from the wild and put them in captivity with other orcas they can't communicate and often times have aggression toward each other. When you look at captive orcas you will see that they have rake marks all over their body. These are from the fights they have with the other orcas they bite at each other and also attack. They do this because they don't have enough space and annoy each other so they start to fight. In one of the SeaWorld parks one of the orcas gave birth to a calf, they were kept together

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