Trolling SeaWorld

I have read research that states males can live to be 70 and
females to 100. I first photographed that fellow with the wavy
 fin in 1977 and a friend photographed him last summer (2015).
 That's 39 years. It's not too difficult to imagine him an
18-year-old teenager in 1977 which would make him older
than SeaWorld. Notice they're swimming toward the boat.

Every time CNN shows the movie "Blackfish" SeaWorld fires up the PR team and floods Twitter with
their side of the story in 140-or-fewer-letter snippets. The foolishness of it is I think they have it on some kind of autodial because they seldom change, just the same old defenses with their unique corporate spin. The best part may be that it doesn't take nearly 140 characters to refute their justifications for keeping whales in captivity.

The only good side of it is trolling them and they caught me in a good mood tonight. At first I wondered about all the tweets and then I remembered "Blackfish" was on tonight. It only took a glass of wine or two to wind it up. Here are a few examples of what I am talking about:

SeaWorld ‏‪@SeaWorld‬ Wondering what it takes to be a killer whale trainer? 


@tjonesak‬ 

@SeaWorld‪ a crass disregard for killer whales' quality of life‬

SeaWorld ‏‪@SeaWorld‬ We have received a number of questions asking why we chose not to appear in Blackfish.

 @tjonesak‬ You had your chance to respond when the film was made. Kibitzing after the fact is so much sour grapes. How's your stock?

SeaWorld ‏‪@SeaWorld‬ We love our killer whales & want everyone to know the truth about our world-class care


@tjonesak‬ 

‪@SeaWorld‪ You have to wonder how they can function at all in the wild without your world-class care. Oh, wait, they don't need it.‬

SeaWorld @SeaWorld Independent research shows SeaWorld’s killer whales live as long as wild killer whales

 @tjonesak @SeaWorld You haven't been in business as long as some killer whales live in the wild.

There's a lot of history involved here and for me it dates back to 1983, earlier if you count my first encounters with killer whales in the late 1970s.

Here is a photo of the same whale made in 2015 and posted by my son on
his facebok page. the whale is AE-14 in the Prince William Sound populaton.

The links below will document most of the history. Each of those stories contains more links so you can go as deeply into this history with the whales as you want to go. There's this, SeaWorld, if you are watching, if you don't remember my name, I bet you remember Tim Jones et al v. Secretary of Commerce.

It gets old posting responses to the same tired defenses SeaWorld puts up every time "Blackfish" comes on, but it needs to be done, over and over again. I am getting old, but there are some young people out there already picking up the flag and fighting on (read, yes, you @Pilo2Lilo ). You are awesome.

The cool thing tonight was I picked up a couple more followers. Almost 40 now, lol. Not quite Lady Gaga numbers yet but I have a few more years left.

A Catalogue of Killer Whales in Prince William Sound Alaska 
One simple fact SeaWorld cannot refute

Blackfish

The singing whales of Alaska's Prince William Sound