Thousands of people visit Seaworld in Orlando, Florida every year. One of the most exciting shows people love to watch is the orca whale show. People may think that the orcas are having fun doing these tricks and making those large splashes to soak the audience in the stands. The truth is revealed in the documentary “Blackfish” which exposes the evils of the sea world trainers and the people who capture these whales and basically enslave them.
The documentary focuses on the whale named Tilikum who is one of the older and more experienced performing whales at Seaworld. He was captured when he was around two years old and has been held captive ever since. Besides being a crowd pleaser, Tilikum is actually one of the more deadly whales to do shows. In his span of performing Tilikum has killed three of the trainers who have worked with him. Many may hear that and think that it was his fault and they should punish the whale, but if you watch this documentary you will see what he had to go thru for years.
The documentary worked hard to show how Seaworld tried to blame everything on the whale. They also go deep to expose why many of these attacks happened. In one instance Tilikum did not perform a task correctly and the trainer refused him food, after she attempted to do a different trick where she rides on his back standing up she was dragged underneath the water and did not resurface.
Tilikum, as noticed in the documentary, has a floppy fin. The documentary uncovers how the Seaworld “experts” say that it is natural among many orcas when in reality only 1% in the wild have it, but every single orca in captivity has the floppy fin. It also exposes how they will say an orca has a shorter lifespan than a human when they really do live around the same age as humans when in the wild.
This documentary was very informative and I enjoyed watching it. Unfortunately, Tilikum passed away this year and we are all left with a broken heart.