SeaWorld’s new whale calf earns dubious distinction

Last month, SeaWorld’s chief zoological officer, Chris Dold, said that the impending birth of a killer whale calf at the franchise’s San Antonio marine mammal park would probably be “bittersweet.”

For Dold, the “sweet” part is the successful 18-month gestation of a new killer whale, whose awesome birth was celebrated on Apr. 19.

The “bitter” part is that this as-yet-unnamed calf is the last killer whale that will be produced by SeaWorld’s captive breeding program.

I might reverse this version of “bittersweet” and suggest that the “sweet” part is SeaWorld’s abandonment of its breeding program, which for many years produced killer whales for display and performance at its several marine mammal theme parks.

After a number of injuries to SeaWorld trainers and several deaths, after the 2013 documentary “Blackfish” exposed the unnatural and unhealthy lives of killer whales in confinement and after sponsors, entertainers and patrons began to boycott SeaWorld, it began to phase out its killer whale performances and in 2016 discontinued its captive breeding program.

But here’s the “bitter” part: if the calf survives, it will face several decades in unnatural conditions thoroughly at odds with its innate instincts and characteristics.

Being the last one is a dubious honor, like being the last prisoner executed before the death penalty is abolished.

I don’t mean to overdramatize the circumstances of this newborn calf. And I do not gainsay the motives and sensibilities of people like Dold and other SeaWorld employees and trainers, whose appreciation and affection for these magnificent beasts are obvious.

Clearly, this calf will receive the best of care and protection. It will have plenty to eat and will enjoy the services of highly skilled veterinarians. It will never accidentally beach itself or be struck by a ship’s propeller.

Perhaps this calf, which will never know what it means to swim a hundred miles a day or hunt fresh fish, will consider life in the equivalent, for a human, of a bathtub to be the most natural, satisfying existence possible.

After all, the poet William Wordsworth, celebrating the confining limits of the sonnet, writes: “Nuns fret not at their Convent’s narrow room/And Hermits are contented with their Cells.”

But not many poets are satisfied with writing only sonnets. And despite the best efforts of SeaWorld’s trainers and caretakers, this newborn killer whale will never experience anything close to the life for which millennia of evolution have prepared it.

For example, in the wild, killer whales are highly social animals organized in matrilineal pods of related individuals. Chief zoological officer Dold says that SeaWorld has no “current plans” to separate its mother, Takara, from her calf. But Takara has four other offspring: two remain in San Antonio, one has been moved to SeaWorld Orlando and the other is in Spain.

And at 25 years of age, Takara won’t live forever. In fact, marine mammals are not known for their longevity in confinement, and they often succumb prematurely to a host of exotic, possibly confinement-related maladies. Here are examples from the Marine Mammal Inventory Report: toxemia, hemorrhagic pneumonia, kidney failure, peritonitis, eosinophilic enteritis and so on. Oddly, some even drown.

But, at best, this calf is unlikely to experience anything close to a highly organized, stable wild pod that can include related individuals from four generations. Pardon my anthropomorphizing, but this calf will not have nieces, nephews, aunts, uncles or cousins.

Nor will it have calves of its own. In fact, if the calf survives a severely constrained life in captivity for several decades, he or she (the gender hasn’t been determined) could well be the last lonely resident of what’s left of SeaWorld.

I’m reluctant to anthropomorphize, to invest animals with human feelings. But apologists for marine mammal captivity often do this, imagining that the captive lives of magnificent seagoing creatures such as killer whales and dolphins are rich, cooperative, even enjoyable experiences that work to the mutual benefit of man and animal.

None of this is true, of course, but we use this idea to rationalize the subjection of these animals to unhealthy, unnatural and generally miserable lives.

John M. Crisp, an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, teaches in the English Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. Readers may send him email at jcrisp@delmar.edu.