WWE Women’s Tag Team Champion Brie Bella has joined PETA in a new campaign against SeaWorld.
PETA announced that the WWE star, from San Diego, would be present for SeaWorld’s virtual annual meeting asking executives when they plan to stop breeding dolphins and release them to seaside sanctuaries.
As part of the campaign, Bella did a photoshoot illustrating the constrictive habitat that a tank is to orcas and dolphins like the ones seen at SeaWorld. For proportion, she did the shoot from within a bathtub.
“When you look at these huge orcas that are in these tanks, it’s like a human being living in a bathtub for their whole lives,” she said in an unlisted video of the shoot. “These mammals can swim for 150 miles a day. How do you do that in here? You can’t.”
She continued, “So if you ask me about going to SeaWorld, I’m just going to tell you no. We are miseducating our children when we taken them to places like that. We are telling them it’s okay for animals to be treated this way. Instead, we should be teaching them compassion. See them living in their habitat with their families. Animals are no different than us. So let’s teach our children that. Always remember to boycott SeaWorld.”
PETA reported that more than 40 orcas and over 500 other dolphins and whales have died in SeaWorld’s tanks. The longest-held captive orca in the world, Corky, remains a resident at SeaWorld San Diego having been taken from her mother off the coast of British Columbia in 1969.
She had been used as a breeder at another facility, PETA states, and none of her calves survived past 47 days; her last pregnancy ended in a miscarriage when her dead baby was found at the bottom of a concrete tank at SeaWorld.
