Recently Spotted 103-Year-Old Orca Is Bad News For SeaWorld -- Here's Why

[jeff47]

118. It's not just money.

I haven't bothered googling it, but let's say an Orca can swim at 40mph. Yes, engineering a 40mph flow of water is just an exercise in money. But you don't just need a 40mph flow.

You need a 40mph flow that can stop on a dime, or the whale smashes into the "back" of the tank when it stops. And it needs to start very quickly, or the whale smashes into the "front" of the tank. And you need it to constantly adjust to what the whale wants to do - perhaps it's feeling like taking it slow at the moment, so you need a 20mph flow. But then it decides to sprint, and you need to crank that all way way up RIGHT NOW.

Even then, you're just creating a treadmill for the whale. It's still in a very small box, creating just as many problems as putting humans in a very small box called "solitary".

It's far better to just not keep the whales in captivity instead of trying to engineer ways to keep the whales in captivity.