Argumentative Essay about Whales in Captivity

Should whales be kept in captivity? No, I believe they shouldn’t because it can cause them depression, cause aggressive behavior towards other whales and humans, and it separates the babies from their mothers.

My first reason is that whales being in captivity can cause depression, Whales kept in captivity aren’t in very healthy living conditions which causes their dorsal fin to collapse which usually indicates depression. As seen in one of the pictures in the Blackfish documentary, tilkum’s dorsal fin was bent over when it was sticking out the water at sea world. This is because he’s been roughed up by another whale over food and other factors that went into him being depressed and changing his mood as well as his behavior. These unhealthy living conditions were too much for tilkum and the other orca whales who lived at seaworld. A big factor in my claim is because of the bad and unhealthy living conditions tilkum lived in.

My second reason is that it can cause aggressive behaviors towards whales and humans. With the tilkum situation, he would have teeth marks and blood on him coming from another whale because they would get aggressive over the food being fed to them. There were 3 incidents when tilkum murdered a human, two of them were trainers, and the other was a trespasser but was under the influence of something. He would be held in these small containers overnight with other whales and it’d be too cramped. Usually if tilkum didn’t do a trick right, he’d cause him and all the other whales not to eat, which made them fight over food.

Now critics of this topic would counter my claim and say whales should stay in captivity, because they bring good money and people’s attention to their attractions. Which does make sense when you have no morals and a greedy person only wanting money and not caring about how the whales truly feel. My third reason is because of seperation, At a young age whales are taken from the wild or from captivity from breeding, and taken somewhere else to another attraction to make more money from different attractions to attractions. This means that mothers are losing their babies so often and sometimes when capturing these whales, they die and are left for dead in the ocean. When in captivity when a baby is made from breeding the whales, they take them away and the mother cries as she tries to get her child back.

To restate, I believe that whales don’t deserve to be held in captivity, because it causes separation, aggressive behaviors, and depression. Whales shouldn’t have to go through this for money and entertainment. To summarize, whales go through a lot for our entertainment and it's cruel because behind the scenes there’s a lot of neglect and abuse that we don’t see. Call to action, Is to sign petitions to either stop whale attractions all together or do it in a better way.