Morgan's Unconquerable Soul...

If you have been following the story about the young female Orca rescued last year off the coast of the Netherlands and held ever since in a small tank in a marine park in Harderwijk, the latest news is not good. The Dutch government has finally issued their ruling in which they rejected the plea by animal rights groups to try to reunite the Orca, who was given the name Morgan, with her family in the wild. Instead the court ordered that she be transferred to an animal park in the Canary Islands.

If you have read my earlier postings on this story, you know that I believe Morgan was doomed either way. The chances of finding her family pod were remote and without them she would have faced certain death alone in the North Sea. Equally dismal, however, are her prospects for living a normal life in the Tenerife marine park since the average life expectancy of Orcas in captivity is ten years compared to fifty or longer in the wild. (An inconvenient truth that the management and owners of these parks, like Sea World, conveniently omit from their PR campaigns.)

In the end, this is just one more sad tale about what happens when the world of whales and dolphins intersects with that of humans; a collision that nearly always proves fatal for the intelligent and sentient beings who dwell in the Seven Seas. Goodbye Morgan. To paraphrase William Ernest Henley's poem Invictus:

Out of the fate that awaits you,
Trapped in a watery hellhole,
We pray whatever gods may be
For your unconquerable soul.

Captive Orcas: Doomed Either Way...

Pending further study, a court in Amsterdam has blocked the sale of a young female Orca (named Morgan by the Dutch) to a Spanish amusement park but the court stopped short of ordering her to be returned to the North Sea where the then-sick animal was rescued a year ago. While freeing Morgan instead of condemning her to a life sentence in a concrete tank in Spain is a romantic notion, the harsh reality is that this resilient little being is doomed either way.

These are highly social animals: their family group is everything to them; providing food, comfort, and safety, to the exclusion of Orcas from different pods. As such, even if the court rules in favor of Morgan's release, the likelihood of her handlers being able to find her family group is slim: barring that, she has little chance of surviving on her own. Arguably, the alternative is even worse.

Female Orcas can live 80 years in the wild but only 10 years on average in captivity. There are over 40 Killer Whales in marine parks around the globe; two-thirds of these are owned by Sea World. While the Company's management and owners wax eloquent about how their actions have contributed to mankind's knowledge about the species, the truth is that captive Orcas are big business, pure and simple. If millions of people didn't spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year gawking at Orcas as they perform stupid animal tricks, we wonder how quickly Sea World's corporate altruism would fade?

Whether a Killer Whale is captured in the wild and sold into captivity, or born there, they lead foreshortened lives of mind-numbing boredom, physical distress, and emotional anguish. On several occasions, this has led to Orcas killing their trainers as happened at Sea World Orlando last year when a 12,000-pound male named Tilikum attacked his trainer, drowning her. It was the third such death involving this particular animal.

Sadly, Morgan is doomed no matter which way the Dutch court rules. And meanwhile, the owners of Sea World, and all the other marine parks like it around the world, keep raking in the money...