By Alexis Steagall, Staff writer
In recent years, animal captivity programs such as SeaWorld have significantly dropped in audiences. In fact, Time magazine claims that SeaWorld’s profits declined by 84 percent since the exposing documentary, Blackfish, was released. This leads to the bigger question of just how much bashing these programs can take.
“Social media informed me of what’s going on,” says Indian Trail High School & Academy senior Justin Flores. “ It allows us to have hashtags and GoFundMe pages to stop captivity.”
With the extensive use of outlets such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, the public has easy access to new information revolving around current issues of captivity. The use of social media has a great impact on views of captivity.
“Celebrities such as Harry Styles, who is very much against SeaWorld, influence a lot of people in our generation to go against things like that,” said Natalie Gadeikis, another student at Indian Trail High School.
Due to their higher social status, celebrities have a larger influence on the public and tend to aid in stopping abusive programs.
The death of 3-month-old Kyara, SeaWorld’s last captive bred orca, has led to further investigations of other whale deaths. The cause of death is presumably pneumonia, the same disease that has killed nine other captive orcas at SeaWorld since 1971. Sixty percent of whale deaths at SeaWorld are a result of infections and could have been prevented with higher quality care.
“I know for a fact that SeaWorld starves their whales so they will do tricks,” says Flores.
These allegations are outraging the public and causing the need for protest. Marine biologist Ingrid Visser has become undoubtedly famous due to her research and undercover work exposing SeaWorld’s conditions. She has produced many films aiding her perspective and has remarkably influenced thousands of audiences. With SeaWorld’s known integrity lessening by the minute and the subject becoming more prominent due to social media, animal captivity programs are slowly collapsing from the pressure.