Analysis of Communication of Animal Welfare and Animal Rights in Aquariums

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The Blackfish Controversy

The film Blackfish covered the tragic death of SeaWorld trainers, including Dawn Brancheau, who was killed by the orca Tilikum. Other trainers’ stories featured in the documentary were those of Tamarie Tollison, Alexis Martinez, and Ken Peters. The documentary discusses the issue of keeping animals, specifically orcas, for entertainment. The film claimed that due to being kept at SeaWorld in captivity, Tilikum was driven into a state of psychosis. This powerful documentary caused the already hot topic of animal rights in the aquarium industry to flare up, which resulted in many consumers boycotting and protesting SeaWorld. Many of the businesses SeaWorld partnered with at the time were also boycotted, such as Southwest Airlines, which had a plane with an image of an orca on it. Many musicians, such as Trace Adkins and Willie Nelson, also backed out of SeaWorld’s “Bands, Brews, & BBQ” concert series in response to the documentary (Kuo & Savidge, 2014).

Blackfish received close to 21 million views on its CNN premier (Kuo & Savidge, 2014). The documentary was and still is extremely accessible, available for viewing on many popular streaming services. Due to the accessible nature of the documentary, it was circulated very quickly throughout the general public. The documentary was also very easy to understand, as opposed to a scientific journal article or other genre directed towards scientists. It was also a very compelling film, featuring footage from SeaWorld, the call to the Orange County Sheriff's Department when a trainer had been killed by a whale, and many interviews with people who were involved with SeaWorld and the tragic death of Dawn Brancheau.

Many aspects of the film directly appealed to the audience’s emotions. For example, the film begins immediately with the 911 call made to Orange County Sheriff's Department after a whale killed one of the trainers. This is extremely compelling to the audience, since it makes the audience have sympathy for the trainer; it also makes the audience anxious to find out how the whale could have killed the trainer. The dramatic start to the film captures the audience’s attention early and already creates a bias against SeaWorld. The documentary was a widely seen film that enabled information to spread quickly, and with it the controversy over the ethics and practices of animal welfare in aquariums was also spread extremely quickly by animal rights activists.

Blackfish played a large part in the spread of information about the ethics of aquariums. However, much of this information that was so widely spread regarding animal welfare of cetaceans in captivity was false information spread by animal rights groups. Dr. Andrew Rhyne, an associate professor of marine biology at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island, specializes in aquaculture, aquariums, and larval ecology. When asked his opinion on Blackfish during a February 19, 2020, interview, his reply was, “It is not accurate. It is almost all propaganda.” Rhyne expressed that there is little to no data in the documentary to support the claims that were made. However, he believes that by SeaWorld putting up highly intelligent animals for public display, the public began to think of SeaWorld as a circus, and that is why Blackfish was created by animal rights activists. Rhyne went on to state that animal rights activists creating the film presented a huge conflict of interest and resulted in an overall lack of scientific evidence to support the claims made by the film. He compared animal rights activists producing a documentary on animal welfare at SeaWorld to the tobacco industry doing an “honest” study on health.

At the same time, Rhyne believed that there was a huge lack of protocol for situations when an animal displayed dangerous behavior at SeaWorld. He said that at any other zoo or aquarium, if an animal had behaved that dangerously towards a human, the animal would have been euthanized, similar to the incident involving Harambe the gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo in 2016. Rhyne also stated that failing to put a protocol into place for dangerous incidents like the death of Dawn Brancheau and the other SeaWorld trainers implied an interesting corporate stance since it showed that SeaWorld valued the lives of their whales over human life, as the whales were major corporate assets and SeaWorld would rather risk a human life over losing a whale. Now, SeaWorld can raise the floor of the main arena fairly quickly in case of an emergency. Rhyne also said that this documentary greatly shaped zoos and aquariums nationwide, due to this highly persuasive documentary.

In response to Blackfish, many animal welfare experts publicly countered the documentary, claiming that it was an inaccurate representation of animal welfare standards and ethics. Likewise, SeaWorld and many of its trainers spoke out against the documentary, insisting that SeaWorld takes utmost care of its animals and that the documentary is unfair, misleading, and exploits the huge tragedy of the passing of Dawn Brancheau and other SeaWorld trainers (Kuo & Savidge, 2014). These conceptions in the animal welfare industry are often countered by leading experts in the field, through magazine articles, scientific papers, interviews, news stories, and many other forms of communication.

Jack Hanna, an American zookeeper and director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium was interviewed on the misconception surrounding the tragic death of Dawn Brancheau, whom he knew personally. In this interview, he defended SeaWorld’s policies and expressed that SeaWorld takes excellent care of their orcas, all while contributing significant amounts of research towards marine animals and educating the public. He also explained that 99% of animals in zoological parks are from other zoos and that almost all of the whales in SeaWorld were born there, and therefore are not taken from the wild and brought into captivity. He stated that SeaWorld spent millions of dollars in rescuing orcas and that the animals seem “very happy.” He also stated that “we do everything we can for the safety of our animals and visitors first” and that the animals at SeaWorld were very well taken care of (CBS News, 2010). Jack Hanna was an excellent interview choice for this popular news station to broadcast animal welfare information aimed at the public since Hanna is a well-known public figure due to many television appearances, and therefore, since many members of the general public know of Hanna, this boosts public trust in his statements.

The Cyanide Controversy

Misconceptions in this field are also countered through magazine articles, such as a 2018 National Geographic article by Ret Talbot, an independent writer and journalist who covers fishery and ocean issues focusing on sustainability and science. Talbot does not consider himself to be a part of any activist community and therefore considers his work unbiased (R. Talbot, personal communication, January 19, 2021). The article Talbot authored covers the controversy over falsified data in two different cyanide detection studies. There is a large problem with the use of potassium cyanide in illegal and unregulated fishing, primarily in Indonesia. When potassium cyanide is mixed with seawater and fish become exposed to this harmful mixture, they become temporarily paralyzed, making them much easier to catch. Since these fish become so easy to catch, they can be collected at an alarmingly fast rate, and this is dangerous for the environment. Cyanide also kills coral, fish, and invertebrates. To prevent the trade of illegally caught fish, many scientists are trying to develop a test to detect cyanide fishing in aquarium fish. In 2012, a paper published in the journal PLoS ONE by Vaz et al. claimed to have developed this test.

However, when Breen et al. (2018) tried to replicate the results from this paper, they found that they could not with an amount of cyanide that would paralyze fish and not completely kill them (Talbot, 2018). In the study, four cyanide exposure studies on common clownfish were performed in three years. Fish were either exposed to 25 parts per million (ppm) of potassium cyanide twice or, as the previously published method did, 50 ppm of potassium cyanide once. Over 100 of the exposed water samples were analyzed, yet no thiocyanate levels were detected. It was eventually found that the fish could not possibly take in enough cyanide to lead to the results published in the 2012 paper. However, a 2016 piece of gray literature self-published by the Center for Biological Diversity and For the Fishes and heavily influenced by the work of the For The Fishes’s founder and Executive Director Rene Umberger’s work stated that the results were successfully replicated.

These papers that have proved cyanide testing to be possible have been published by animal rights activists who have skewed their data to manipulate the public through the use of poor lab techniques (Talbot, 2018). Unpublished information has been delivered at conferences, provided to news outlets, and cited in some of their own subsequent publications. For example, a website called Science News for Students also published that cyanide testing is possible, citing Rene Umberger. When originally interviewed, Dr. Rhyne expressed his belief that animal rights activists often maliciously publish false data to try to affect the public’s opinion in their favor because they see the aquarium trade as a danger to coral reefs (A. Rhyne, personal communication, January 19, 2021). They did not care whether their data was correct or not; they simply saw it as a means to an end. It can be difficult to determine what sources are reputable and what sources have been manipulated since animal rights activists use similar writing standards as scientists and animal welfare experts. Rhyne is taking part in trying to combat this issue through replicating experiments done by animal rights activists and publishing his results in scientific journals targeted at the scientific discourse community, as well as magazines targeted more towards the general public and those interested in science, like National Geographic.

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