When in fact, more than once they decry Sea World blaming Dawn for her ponytail and how awful it is to place blame on her. The former trainers who try to analyze the incident plainly say they’re speculating at possible alternatives or signals that Tilikum was giving to indicate he was having an “off” day, not…

Wow. Yeah. Okay. Have a nice day!

I’m not being duped by anything. Your interpretations of these parts of the movie are wildly overreaching. I think almost nobody comes away from Blackfish thinking “Yeah, that Dawn...it sure is HER fault she died. If only she had somehow made that whale look at her.” Like literally you’re the only person who seems to…

Eventually, yeah, maybe. But right now that’s not the case. So let’s let them live where they belong. If pollution became so extreme that a tank would be the better option, then yeah, go Sea World. But that’s not the situation right now, nor was it back in the 60s when they started to capture the whales. To say that…

What does the boat propeller incident have to do with the story?

Are you saying that the oceans are so toxic that it’s better that we keep orcas in captivity?

I have absolutely no idea how you interpreted the movie as trashing Dawn Brancheau or saying she was punishing Tilikum, or that it wavers on how killer whales are “supposed” to behave toward people.

Do you work for Sea World? Because Blackfish aside, I don’t know how anybody can say that keeping these animals in a tank is not downright cruel when you think of how freaking MASSIVE their natural habitat is.

It’s like you watched a completely different movie than like, anyone else.

I’m sorry, let’s say there are inconsistencies in the film. That doesn’t change the bottom line, does it? Are you defending Sea World on some level? I really don’t see the need to have Orcas confined in tanks for the amusement of people. It’s cruel. And Tilikum did kill 3 people.

Um...I’ve watched the film a couple of times. It never implied that she was punishing Tilikum during the final performance. In fact, you can’t really punish dolphins or killer whales, you just give a ‘negative response’ which usually means ignoring them until they stop acting up. It mentioned that the whale wasn’t…

Sea World should never have put any trainer in the water with that orca, especially not once he’d killed two people. He is very ill from years of captivity stress. If he couldn’t be released, he should have been euthanized. Instead he’s been kept alive and isolated so his semen can be collected and used to artifically…

Death at SeaWorld by David Kirby was even better, I thought. I read it before Blackfish came out. And I recently read Beyond Words by Carl Safina. Both go into great detail about what natural killer whale lives look like, and how outrageous it is that humans keep them in captivity (slavery) for entertainment.

#3 is really what counts. A quick death to end a highly social life in a pod full of family members in the big wide ocean vs. a prolonged sickness to end a miserable, lonely life of noisy, bewildering captivity. How can they even attempt to make a favorable comparison?

And does living out “his remaining days as peaceful and happy as possible” mean in jail with rage and a disease he prob got only because he is in jail? Because that's not what my dictionary says about peaceful.

I’m pretty sure it’s too late for that. :/

Let’s hope Tilikum lives out his remaining days as peaceful and happy as possible.

Tilikum’s life has been an abject tragedy.

1. Fuck SeaWorld.

Considering Tilikum has beaten the average in-captivity lifespan by ten years, the fact that he’s still not even half-way through the average wild lifespan is particularly sad.