(Opinion/Press release)
Candace Calloway Whiting
Candace Calloway Whiting has studied and trained dolphins, seals, and orca whales. She is currently a volunteer at the Center for Whale Research at Friday Harbor.
"Death at SeaWorld" – Exposing the Dark Side of Captivity
This press release could not have come at a better time, as SeaWorld continues to battle the U.S. Government on the wisdom of forcing trainers into life endangering routines, fights with Marineland over where an orca should live, faces a lawsuit from PETA on 13th amendment rights (slavery), copes with leaks about their links to the dolphin slaughter in Taiji, and is shown to have huge influence over government decisions about rescued animals. People need cogent, compellingly written explanations of what really goes on at SeaWorld – and this book will deliver.
DEATH AT SEAWORLD
Shamu and the Dark Side of Killer Whales in Captivity
DAVID KIRBY – April 2012
From The New York Times bestselling author of Evidence of Harm and Animal Factory—a groundbreaking scientific thriller that exposes the dark side of SeaWorld, America's most beloved marine mammal theme park.
Death at SeaWorld centers on the public battle with the multimillion-dollar marine park industry over the controversial and even lethal ramifications of keeping killer whales in captivity. Following the story of marine biologist and U.S. Humane Society advocate Naomi Rose, Kirby tells the gripping story of the two-decade fight against PR-savvy SeaWorld, which came to a head with the tragic death of trainer Dawn Brancheau in 2010. Kirby puts that horrific animal-on-human attack in context. Brancheau's death was the most publicized among several brutal attacks that have occurred at SeaWorld and other marine mammal theme parks.
Death at SeaWorld introduces real people taking part in this debate, from former trainers turned animal rights activists to the men and women that champion SeaWorld and the captivity of whales. In section two the orcas act out. And as the story progresses and orca attacks on trainers become increasingly violent, the warnings of Naomi Rose and other scientists fall on deaf ears, only to be realized with the death of Dawn Brancheau. Finally he covers the media backlash, the eye-witnesses who come forward to challenge SeaWorld's glossy image, and the groundbreaking OSHA case that challenges the very idea of keeping killer whales in captivity and may spell the end of having trainers in the water with the ocean's top predators.
Death at SeaWorld exposes the backroom politics, profit-centered policies and dangerous conditions at SeaWorld, America's most beloved marine mammal park.
DAVID KIRBY is the author of Evidence of Harm, which was a New York Times bestseller, winner of the 2005 Investigative Reporters and Editors award for best book, and a finalist for the New York Public Library Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism, and Animal Factory, a highly acclaimed investigation into the environmental impact of factory farms. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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