SeaWorld Fights Back at the Critical Documentary 'Blackfish'

When SeaWorld Entertainment emerged as one of the stars of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, it wasn’t the role that the theme park, home of the loveable acrobat orca Shamu, had hoped for. Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s powerful Blackfish, which opens today in select markets, focuses on the brutal 2010 killing of veteran trainer Dawn Brancheau by one of the park’s whales. Cowperthwaite gained access to a trove of film footage of incidents at the park and conducted several emotional interviews with former SeaWorld trainers, some of whom knew Brancheau and had worked with Tilikum, the 32-year-old killer whale responsible for her death and those of two other individuals. Spoiler alert: SeaWorld isn’t the hero.

Among other things, Blackfish suggests that the company has spread misinformation about orca-related incidents, including Brancheau’s death. Last year the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) cited SeaWorld for two violations related to the untimely episode. The film also makes a broader, impassioned plea against orca captivity, voicing concerns that separating such intelligent and socially complex mammals from their families—and forcing them to perform tricks in exchange for food—constitutes slavery. “I thought I was making a completely different movie about human beings and their animals,” says Cowperthwaite, who says she wasn’t an activist but “an ordinary mother who used to take her kids to SeaWorld” at the time she decided to make the film. “After two years, having learned what I’ve learned,” she says, “I now feel that killer whale captivity needs to come to an end.”