Tilikum: The Blackfish effect
One Voice leads a nonviolent fight to defend animal rights and respect all life forms. The organization operates independently and is thus free to speak and act freely.
Tilly, dear Tilly. Six years already. We fight for you and yours. We do not give up. Resist a little longer, we are moving towards your freedom, towards your freedom. Your desperate gesture has been heard. Continue to resist !
Today,
after thirty-three years of detention, Tilikum, aka Tilly, is subdued
by tranquilizers, floating motionless and facing a wall. His dorsal
fin is so flaccid that it hangs on his side. Sadly, echoing The
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,
Tilikum was punished for wanting to break his chains. Seaworld, who
wants him alive, has put him in a chemical straightjacket. He is a
“breeding bull”. His seed is highly prized.
However,
his suicidal revolt will not have been in vain: thanks to him, all
captive orcas can now benefit from a new public gaze. The Blackfish
effect continues to eat away at SeaWorld and soon, all companies that
exhibit orcas in glass jars will have to deal with this change of
opinion. Tilikum is a whistle-blower, a Spartacus amongst orcas!
At
sea, no orca has attacked a human. In captivity, there have been
hundreds of incidents. Why this violence? Orcas are not happy;
SeaWorld explains that they are receiving the best veterinary care
and the best gourmet food? No, they are not. Orcas have extremely
developed brains. Maybe even more developed than that of the human
brain …
When
it was revealed in Death
at SeaWorld and
then in Blackfish in
2013, Tilikum’s story moved the world. Clearly the victim of an
industrial lobby, his violent attack has paradoxically revealed all
the “humanity” of captive orcas, all the suffering that
these giant slaves feel, locked up in an overcrowded pit, and that
sometimes makes them swing from the “dark side” of the
force, to use John Hargrove’s words.
Born
in the icy waters of Iceland, Tilly was kidnapped from his mother and
tribe in 1983, at the age of two. He later became a gigantic male,
but he was still a shy male. At Sealand of the Pacific where he was
brought, he was locked up every night in a shed with two aggressive
females. Every morning he came out covered in wounds. And one day, at
the end of his nerves, he dragged his trainer by the foot and drowned
her. A little later, he killed a drifter who had probably plunged
into his pool. But for SeaWorld, the moods of killer whales must not
be known. Tilly’s past has been concealed. Until the death of Dawn
Brancheau, February 24, 2010.
Tilikum’s
mad despair did not go unnoticed. His miserable life, his anger, this
dignity that he desperately tries to win back, inspires our struggle.
We do not want killer whales to be enslaved any longer. We do not
want to see them suffer anymore. We must save Tilikum and the
fifty-five other orcas that are still held in the world!
Please
sign and diffuse our petition for closing dolphinariums !