Marineland Whale Dies

At Marineland, Canada on Sunday morning...

Neocia, one of 5 orcas, has passed away. :(
A small news story can be found here.

It's kind of ashame since the whales are their main attraction & they haven't been breeding as much as the Beluga Whales have. I think the Belugas are outnumbering the orcas by at least a 2 to 1 ratio.

There's no word on how she died, but it seems as if Orcas aren't as well taken care of there for one reason or another. I could swear that this was at least the 5th killer whale that has passed away at the park in the past 10 years (again, assumption).

I remember 5-7 years ago when I went up there they had a bunch of people protesting in the parking lot and yelling at me when I bought my ticket. Don't know if they have serious problems or not, but they certainly had a lot of protestors. I just assumed it was a Canada thing as I've never seen this at Sea World.

Every year on opening day at Sea World Ohio there would be protesters. Even the "good boys" get protesters.

When I visited WOA last year I had a chance to chat with one of the handlers. She was working on her masters degree in marine biology and doing the work as an internship. She said a lot of the other handlers were in similar situations. She explained that most of their animals were captive bred and did receive the best possible care. Still, the orcas have cosiderably shorter lifespans in captivity compared to say a tiger, which can have a much longer lifespan. Maybe it's just time to drop the orcas completely.

You really want to see some crappy conditions check out the "Swim with a dolphin" attractions in some of the Carribean islands. There was one in the Dominican Republic that our rep tried to get us to visit. We looked it up on the net and it had the one of the worst records for animal care in the world.