Mighty Mike and ‘Blackfish’: In defence of Sea World–the hypocrisy of CNN
It’s not a secret that I support and love the Newport Aquarium. Over the years I have never grown tired of it, and consider it one of the great Midwest destination points. For travelers coming from New York, Europe, and Malaysia or anywhere for that matter, even Florida—the Newport Aquarium is a combination of spectacular river views, one of the best overlooks of the Cincinnati cityscape there is coupled with an intense love of aquatic conservation. It is a Cincinnati treasure that never wears out. The sharks, and fish exhibits are wonderful—they are top class. But, it is the Turtle Canyon and Alligator Alley that really set this aquarium apart from others and makes Newport such a special place. The animals at the aquarium are lucky to be there—especially Mighty Mike—the 14 ft alligator designated for destruction in Florida when he was found to be too much of a menace to leave alone by the conservation department. Mighty Mike if left in the wild would have been destroyed—but because of places like the Newport Aquarium there was a justifiable reason to capture the large animal and put him in a resort so people could learn about him while also giving him the most optimal surroundings to retire in as he is estimated to be around 50 years old—old for an alligator.
Mighty Mike left the Aquarium in 2011 for a bit of a tour at a zoo but has returned in the spring of 2014 to a new exhibit much more accommodating for the large creature. Here Mike gets spoon fed a few times a week and gets to hang out in a perfectly climate controlled area that never changes. The new exhibit area spans 44 feet and holds 8,000 gallons of water. This makes the new area 30 percent bigger than Mighty Mike’s previous display space. His viewing height is just over 40 inches above floor level when he’s floating in the water. This puts Mighty Mike at the perfect height for children’s viewing.
The water temperature is kept at 80 degrees, ideal for American alligators. New heaters were installed in the area to assure the temperature is met year-round, and new UV sterilization systems assure that the water quality and clarity is pristine for the Aquarium’s large guest. In addition, a 12-foot by 14-foot basking area was constructed for Mighty Mike’s favorite pastime: sunning.
Over 7,000 pounds of concrete have been mixed, colored and hand-applied to the new exhibit area to create faux-rock work, along with over 3,000 pounds of sand for the habitat.
http://www.fox19.com/story/16578564/mighty-mike-returning-to-newport-aquarium
Without tourism like some of the alligator farms in Florida and the Newport Aquarium, animals like Mighty Mike would be destroyed as a menace. If he lived in Africa which hosts a human population still subservient to wildlife due to technological insufficiency Mighty Mike would not have many natural predators. But in Florida—he was just too big to be kept in the wild. Mankind is not subservient to animal life, but is in command of it—that is an important distinction for what I’m going to say next. Also, human life is not more important than intellectual understanding. Humans need to know, to press the bounds of limitation. Advancement technical and intellectual is more important than the death of any individual—such as the case involving the recent Virgin Galactic crash. Just because handling a large alligator like Mighty Mike is dangerous does not mean that there should not be an attempt so that millions of visitors to the Newport Aquarium can learn about the large creature up close and personal. If an occasional trainer is injured or even killed in that process it is worth the experience and preservation of the animal.
This has never been truer than the recent trouble that Sea World is having after CNN aired purposely in support of their radical left winged agenda driven regressive human position the documentary flop called Blackfish. The film was a flop because it only made $2,073,582 during its release. For comparison of how much money that is consider that the films of the Atlas Shrugged series made more money and they were considered a horrible box office disappointment that were castigated by virtually every national media outlet and critics associations. Yet CNN picked up the rights showing the film in October of 2014 causing stock for Sea World to plummet because it was there that regular people and not progressive radicals saw the movie.
Blackfish is a 2013 documentary directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite. The film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2013, and was picked up by Magnolia Pictures and CNN Films for wider release.
Blackfish focuses on Tilikum, an orca held by SeaWorld, and the controversy over captive killer whales.
The documentary[1] focuses on the captivity of Tilikum, an orca involved in the deaths of three individuals, and the consequences of keeping orcas in captivity. The coverage of Tilikum includes his capture in 1983 off the coast of Iceland, and purported harassment by fellow captive orcas at Sealand of the Pacific, incidents that Cowperthwaite argues contributed to the orca’s aggression and includes testimonial from Lori Marino, Director of Science with Nonhuman Rights Project. Cowperthwaite also focuses on SeaWorld‘s claims that lifespans of orcas in captivity are comparable to those in the wild,[2] typically 30 years for males and 50 years for females,[3] a claim the film argues is false.[4] Interview subjects also include former SeaWorld trainers, such as John Hargrove, who describe their experiences with Tilikum and other captive whales.
Cowperthwaite began work on the film after the 2010 death of Tilikum’s trainer Dawn Brancheau and in response to the claim that the orca had targeted the trainer because she had worn her hair in a ponytail.[5] Cowperthwaite argued that this claim had been conjecture and that “there had to be more to this story”.[5]
The film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2013, and was picked up by Magnolia Pictures and CNN Films for wider release.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackfish_(film)
I love Sea World and find the whale shows enchanting. Yes the killer whales on display there are dangerous, and yes they do occasionally kill trainers, or maim them. Sometimes it is playfully; sometimes they just don’t know their own strength, and sometimes the whales primal instincts come in and they grab a trainer by the leg and drag them deep into the water to drown them. Gabriela Cowperthwaite because her film attacked the “corporation” of Sea World was paraded around from interview to interview by the progressive media hoping to catch fire to her film. Under the entire enterprise is an attack on the corporate nature of Sea World and an intense desire to bring it down. It reminded me of the several films done against Wal-Mart and McDonald’s over the years attacking the corporate profits generated by these types of companies with a barely disguised effort to destroy capitalism behind a ruse of conservation.
Cowperthwaite behaving like a typical neurotic mom type overly careful in her raising of her children—as one of those bicycle helmet safety first parents who strap their kids up to the chin in padding so they can ride their bikes down the driveway of their house—took it upon her self after seeing an orca whale at Sea World kill a trainer to expose the entertainment giant as a profit first greedy company of exploitive evil. She won awards, critical acclaim and a fan following within progressive circles and nut cases like the PETA girls who stand naked in public to protest the harmful treatment of animals. The movie didn’t get any play until CNN offered the film for free on its news station and it was there that it received a bit of an audience.
This has of course put Sea World on the defensive—because it takes a lot of money driven by profit to run those massive parks—and care for all their animals. The Cowperthwaite argument that Sea World’s animals would live longer in the wild, or have a dominate dorsal fin sticking up erect in the water if they were wild is built on the premise that corporations are evil while nature is an eternal benefactor.
The truth about Tilikum featured in Blackfish is that he was an abused whale and was not the most dominant of his herd—meaning in the wild he would have to compete for mating rights, food and even social status with more dominant killer whales. It is unlikely that he would survive long in the wild, but at Sea World he at least is able to live well in nice climate controlled waters and is fed every day on time by people at Sea World who generally cares about him. Yes he is profitable to Sea World—and he has a lot more value to the human population at Sea World than he did off the coast of Iceland—of which people like Cowperthwaite and the geniuses at CNN would declare—“who are we to say such things?” Well the answer is that human beings right to know supersedes nature and even human life if our species is to advance. Progressives (regressives) actually desire to return back to the nature worship of our primitive past when we did not have tools to deal with such monsters of the ocean, or decedents of the dinosaur like Mighty Mike—the alligator.
The attack on Sea World is the same communist rhetoric which founded the progressive movement to begin with—their intention is not animal conservation, which is arguably far better for the animals under Sea World’s care than in the wild—it is the corporate nature of profit that Sea World uses to propel its conservation awareness. Leftist groups that have rallied behind Cowperthwaite’s film wish to use her motherly panic to attack yet another American corporation with the hopes of devaluing it into nothingness. Largely, by the investment reports regarding Sea World, CNN was successful as the stock price plummeted after the October airing of Blackfish.
For those who really love earth’s animals and wish to learn more about them, a zoo, an aquarium or an amusement park dedicated to that study is a wonderful invention. The most important thing to nurture in the human race is the development of their minds—even if death is sometimes a factor. Safety is not more important than intellectual understanding. Cowperthwaite’s panic over what her children saw at Sea World when Tilikum turned on its trainers stroked the fires of activism in her taking a film maker who needed a project that would have some legs and left her to exploit a corporation that does considerable good for oceanic research and used the progressive left to fuel her efforts at legitimacy. She used CNN for fame she wouldn’t have otherwise obtained, and CNN used her to advance their regressive social agenda of climate conspiracies and anti corporation banter.
Whenever I see Mighty Mike at the Newport Aquarium I am thankful that there is such a place where I can see such a magnificent animal on my way to the bookstore at Newport on the Levy and dining at Claddagh’s. If he wasn’t there, I wouldn’t get a chance to see him and appreciate his magnificence along with the nature that produced him. It’s a good deal, he gets a nice place to reside free of trappers and other predators—even climate fluctuations. People get to see a great exhibit, and human beings are able to advance through intellectual stimulation. Everybody wins, just as they do at Sea World. Life in the wild isn’t so great for the killer whales—mother earth is not kind to her children of the sea. Life is hard and food is difficult to find. You would think CNN and the other progressives would see animal captivity as an appropriate metaphor for their social policies of government dependence and wealth redistribution. They don’t think anything of making millions of people dependent on welfare yet they can clearly see the trouble of making animals addicted to human intervention into the natural patterns of a whale’s life. Yet they argue both ways—with illogical conclusions that point to only one ending, the destruction of the human race in favor of nature regaining control of the future of all evolution—instead of the tools of man formed through observations of Mighty Mike and his prehistoric presence.
Rich Hoffman
