The world is full of great and intelligent lifeforms that resemble people and human personality, a lot of humans on Earth disregard this fact because we have a far greater developed mind than many other animals on the planet we live in. Each species of animals has their own unique qualities that make them more advanced than the other. Another example of an advanced species are orca or killer Whales. We use many animals for entertainment, research, and for domestication purposes. Orca whales in most cases are used for entertainment purposes, captured and confined from the ocean and taken advantage of inside of these little pools where they are forced to perform for people. Orcas are extremely intelligent animals and to treat them like clowns in a circus is undermining of their existence. Orca whales are powerful creatures that inspire even people with their thought process and ability to control the ocean with such pride. And yet we confine them at a young age to splash some people in the audience and eat small fish in a tiny pool for the rest of their lives.

In a marine park or aquarium orcas are most likely in an extremely confined space and other locations may in fact also use them just for entertainment when we could be at least using them to learn about orcas. If you are going to confine and take advantage of an animal then use it to its fullest potential. Get inspired from it, learn from it, teach it things that it normally would not do in the ocean, or maybe even allow the orca to go free sometime in its life. The intentional confinement of orca whales is what makes the situation of using these creatures for entertainment questionable. Since the year 1961 when orcas were first being captured for whale related entertainment and study, at least 151 orcas were taken from the wild to be used and now 127 of them have died in captivity (The Fate of Captive Orcas). These extreme numbers would obviously show that almost 70% of the time a whale is captured it will shortly die in captivity. Is it right to keep orcas in captivity knowing that more than half of them will die in a tiny pool jumping out of it to entertain some people in an audience? No, there should be no reason for the capture of whales for human use or entertainment. This also means orcas in aquariums as well should not be shown.

The benefits of keeping an Orca whale captive may seem alluring to someone who is willing to show appreciation for the whale at least, but is it really worth doing just for the lust of knowledge? Someone who maybe wants to learn from the Orca and experience its daily activity. Maybe if there is a child who wants to be someone who saves and protects animals will see these captured whales and be inspired to save them. But tossing away a wild animals perfectly natural existence to fulfill these human goals is a ridiculous reason for capturing orcas or any wild animal. Unless it directly benefits the whale and its livelihood then there should be no reason that an Orca is taken from its pod, its natural habitat, its home. Although there are benefits to capturing orcas and displaying for reasons like educational purposes and possibly other forms of scientific study. The chances that you could endanger the entire species as a whole may increase while doing so and it is not worth the risk. This is what sets orcas apart from other animals in captivity, they have long lifespans and female orcas are not mature enough to mate until 15 years of age and for males it is around 13 years of age (Killer Whale Reproduction). In captivity this is half or maybe almost the end of their life, many captive orcas will not live long enough to reproduce and create a larger number of the species. We as humans are slowly but surely killing off the killer whale by capturing them. Many other factors also play into the reasoning behind capturing whales, but it is not worth making the species suffer so we can use it for entertainment as well as mass reproduction of whales from what they have already captured.

The best way we could end this is by placing the previously captured whales in habitats that keep them safe, in large secluded areas of salt water for them to live and pass on without being confined in a small pool and being forced to perform for human entertainment. Orca whales are fantastic creatures with massive intelligence and problem solving skills that even some people can not even comprehend. These large and mysterious creatures show vast amounts of intelligence that we take advantage of, forcing them to do something that they were not designed naturally to do. Something needs to be done to stop the capturing of this species of whale before it is too late and someone needs to care. If even one person cares about these wonderful creatures then they will have a voice and they will be heard.