Blackfish Documentary Analysis

Blackfish In the documentary Blackfish, the director, Gabriela Cowperthwaite, uses experiences from trainers that used to work at Sea World, examples of the inhumane treatment of the whales that are kept in captivity, and the injuries and deaths to convince people to not support Sea World by going there to view the huge attraction. People see Sea World as a happy, family environment because of the advertisements they put out to the public. The commercials and ads make it look like the whales are happy being kept in captivity at Sea World. In reality it is quite the opposite. The documentary features many people that used to work at Sea World. Each one of them said that the head people of the amusement area kept secrets from them about the whales. It turns out that Tilikum, also known as Shamu, was bought from Sealand in Canada after he killed Keltie Byrne, one of the trainers there. Sea World kept this information from their whale trainers. Sea World also kept the information as to why they bought Tilikum. Sea World had the intentions to breed him with the female whales that they already have even though they knew of
The death of Keltie Byrne that was mentioned earlier is one of the results of Tilikum’s behavior. The newspaper said that the death wasn’t Tilikum’s fault, but Keltie’s. Once Tilikum was moved to Sea World from Sealand, he was attacked by the other orcas placing more stress and sadness in his life. Dawn Brancheau, one of the best trainers at Sea World, was the main trainer of Tilikum. Even though they had a very close relationship, Tilikum’s frustration and aggression ended up taking the life of Dawn as well. Once again, the newspapers never talked about the truth of the incident. They said that it was Dawn’s fault and bad timing to cover up for Sea World’s reputation. There was one other death and over seventy injuries that happened to the