Orca Morgan Beaches Herself, Lies Motionless on Concrete Slab Beside Her Tiny Pool at Loro Parque
A video has emerged showing an orca named Morgan dragging herself out of the water and lying motionless beside the pool where she is made to perform in Tenerife, Spain.
She lay there for at least 10 minutes. Some tourists ignored her, others stopped to take selfies.
“This is one of many examples of what is wrong with captivity. One would never see this bizarre behavior in nature,” an expert from the Dolphin Project commented. Some viewers have even suggested that Morgan was trying to kill herself: “Looks to me as if she was trying to take her own life, I don’t blame her,” one wrote.
Many of you already know Morgan’s heartbreaking story. As a young orca, she was found emaciated in the Wadden Sea off the coast of the Netherlands six years ago. A Dutch dolphinarium captured her with a specific permit to help her recover and rehabilitate her so she could return to the wild. But instead of being re-united with her pod in the Norwegian Sea, she was shipped off to a marine park in Tenerife, where she has been held captive and forced to perform ever since.
At Loro Parque, where she is “on loan” from SeaWorld, she is treated as a possession and used for profit. This is not the first time that she’s demonstrated signs of distress and suffering. She has been attacked by incompatible orcas dozens of times a day, has smashed her head into a gate over and over again, and has now beached herself in absolute desperation. Her behaviour shows that she is frantic to get back to the ocean home that she remembers and misses.
SeaWorld needs to release this suffering orca and the others it holds captive to seaside sanctuaries now.
Please take action for Morgan – write to Spanish authorities and urge them to release her.
Help Free Morgan!
