Fatal injuries from fights, foreign object ingestion, intestinal torsion, chronic stomach ulceration and fungal infections, severe anaemia and gastric impaction, toxoplasmosis and even a filtration pipe drowning – just a few of the horrific causes of death at Sea World Australia.
Sea World Gold Coast has long been Queensland’s go-to family theme park, the pick of the animal attraction based bunch of Village Roadshow Theme Parks. Its ‘sand bottom lagoons,’ surrounded by swaying palm trees are marketed as a natural environment for animals and designed to make us feel ‘our Sea World’ is a place where ‘rescued’ and ‘endangered’ animals go to live happily-ever-after lives. But there’s an awful reality behind the facade, a darker side you won’t hear the well-versed animal trainers discuss during that bucket list dolphin adventure, nor will there be any mention of it during the parks theatrical stadium shows.
Animals die at Sea World – they die a lot, and for a large number of marine mammals at the park, those deaths have occurred in the most grisly of ways.
According to publicly accessible documents, in a period spanning just 20 of the parks 40 years, over 100 dolphins, false killer whales, polar bears and seals died at Sea World Gold Coast – an average of 5 large marine mammal deaths every year. When considering the parks further 20 years spent breeding and collecting these species in addition to failed pregnancies, shark, ray, fish and penguin fatalities – Sea World’s overall animal death toll would likely be staggering.
Despite recent tax payer funded bailouts worth millions, Sea World seems to see no need for transparency; obtaining information about the parks animals, their births and deaths is a difficult task. Documentation is scarce and disturbingly vague and when basic questions are asked of Sea World’s management and staff, factual responses are rarely forthcoming. When asking specifically about the dolphins at the park, the little information staff do choose to provide is often questionable at best and sometimes they even deliberately lie.
For the first 10 years of its operations, public records about Sea World’s animals are virtually non-existent. However, from the 80’s until approximately 1994, Sea World did voluntarily report its births, deaths, wild captures, transfers and international imports of dolphins (and seals) to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). At around the same time in 1994, reflective of evolving conservation concerns and changing public attitudes, the Australian Government outlawed the capture of wild marine mammals and their import and Sea World stopped reporting to the US agency.
Unable to capture dolphins from the wild or import them from overseas, Sea World now bred its marine mammals in order to maintain its entertainment stock. It also created a research and rescue foundation, enabling it to take stranded, sick or injured marine mammals from the wild. However those rescued animals, if deemed unreleasable (by the government on Sea World’s recommendation) are absorbed into Sea World’s ‘collection’ then useable in its breeding programs, public interactions and entertaining shows. From where the majority of its other animal species come is anyones guess.
Sea World’s permits seem to allow the display of up to 36 dolphins across its three seperate pool areas. However, regardless of the numbers of births, rescues or deceased animals being removed from Sea World’s pens, ask any staff member, on any given day how many dolphins there are at the park, and the answer is consistently – ‘around 30.’
So who’s keeping check?
Sea World is licensed, under the Exhibited Animals Act 2015, administered by the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF). However aside from its total numbers of marine mammals and species, Sea World is not required to provide any animal identifying information to its Biosecurity boss. Sea World however, must keep its own records, but under the Act the park is not required to provide the information it records to its permitting authority – or to any other independent watchdog it seems. Sea World operates with almost complete autonomy, its exhibition permits are only renewed every 3 years and so what goes on with the animals between renewals there is virtually unknown.
In December 2016 a Dolphin Calf was born at Sea World and hugely celebrated in the media, the first male dolphin calf born to the park in years. Sometime before his first birthday ‘Dusty’ died, yet the public were never told of his death and never noticed. Around mid 2017 another 2 dolphins were due to give birth at the park, but only one male dolphin calf was born – that we know of. Like Dusty’s death, ‘Dougie’s’ birth was never announced and he was quietly included in Sea Worlds shows. Sea World is required to report a dolphin birth and a death in its permit renewal, but should it not – who would know? The numbers remain the same.
Just a handful of animal births have ever been announced by Sea World and rarely a dolphin or even a seal death becomes public knowledge. So too the failed pregnancies and stillborns are never mentioned and those don’t appear to be included in available records at all. Only when an animal death at Sea World cannot be missed does it seem the public are told of its unfortunate demise. Amity the much loved pink dolphin or the recent passing of Liya the large unmissable mother Polar Bear, cases in point.
Amity and Liya were well known and much loved animals at Sea World. Photos: Black Cove & Sea World Facebook Page.
Through its successful rescue stories and persuasive marketing techniques, Sea World continues to convince the public that keeping and breeding its never-to-be-released animals is for our education and somehow aids the conservation of these species in the wild. Their dolphins, seals and polar bears are forced to exist in small, mostly barren park pens amongst thrill rides and noise filled carnivals and we are told by Sea World this is a wonderful and natural thing. Births and deaths however, are also usually a natural occurrence, so it’s a curiosity why Sea World choose to hide the results of its breeding program; so too the inevitable animal deaths that occur at the park.
Perhaps keeping mum about how often and what causes its animals to die is simply a matter of business preservation, after all Sea World is owned by a large entertainment company and gruesome animal deaths won’t sell tickets at the family park gates. Or maybe its a more deliberate concealment of the problematic nature when breeding and keeping large, intelligent, free ranging wild marine mammals in permanent confinement within a theme park, where the need to amuse paying visitors will always be prioritised no matter the animal toll.
Learn the facts about marine mammals in captivity here: https://awionline.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/AWI-ML-CAMMIC-5th-edition.pdf
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Refs: CetaBase, NOAA, Department Agriculture and Fisheries QLD. Images: Black Cove unless otherwise stated.
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