On Blackfish

I noticed Blackfish was up on Netflix last night so I settled in to watch that (and right after saw that apparently protesters had stopped the Seaworld float at the Rose Bowl parade). I'd recommend it, though according to what I've seen from others it can be rough watching. During my research for arctic fantasy and comedy of manners I'd come across a lot of snippets and basic info of the incidents so I knew what was coming and none of it left me particularly shaken but there were still points that I'd consider chilling or breath-taking. A lot of people said they had to stop/pause when they took Kalina away from her mother and heard these heart-wracking cries afterward. I've listened to more orca calls than is good for anybody, and I'd never heard anything like it. The documentary pointed out that neither had anybody else, and it doesn't take an expert to know how raw it sounded. That's the kind of thing that'll haunt you.

The interview with the whale hunter early on alone is worth the watch, when he says that after catching the baby whales the rest of the pod stuck close and called for them that he "realized what we were doing. We were kidnapping little kids."

I think the one thing that really boggled me were all the videos of Seaworld staff claiming that orcas live for 25 years so their lives are even better in captivity because they live longer (Lolita, at 40, is the oldest orca in captivity, which is still less than half a natural lifespan). The video might be back from the 90s (they look recent in which case there's no excuse because you should wikipedia that, seriously), but we've known they live well past that since at least the 80s. Corporate greed and indifference? No surprise. Blatantly spouting easily disproven misinformation? Yeah, that still surprises me, though it really shouldn't.

The bit on Loro Parque could have been expanded more, but the film was focused on trainer deaths--and honestly, while there were things in the film that surprised me, it didn't quite capture the full-on madhouse that is orca life in captivity for the orcas themselves. It did show more of Tilikum's life than I expected, I knew he'd been bullied terribly at Sealand but apparently that continued at Sea World and that was the start of his spending time alone, to protect him from the females rather than his history of killing people. I also heard, for the first time, that apparently he was an eager people pleaser. Striking, given that no one else mentioned that and it made the story all the more painful, I guess. Here's this whale getting dumped on by his tankmates who is the most agreeable and amiable whale to work with to humans. I know people might say this shows nothing, it's not like he's a bullied soul seeking solace where he can find it and then lashing out, he's an animal, but it's a hard comparison to shake.

The more I learn, the less I think it's possible to overly anthropomorphize their behavior.