Will captive orcas star at Sochi Winter Olympics? Opposition is building

 Blackfish the Movie” has spawned a global movement against the practice of keeping orcas in captivity as show animals.
The iconic mammals are highly intelligent and form close family bonds in the wild. They roam vast parcels of ocean and should not be separated from their families, animal rights activists say, and kept in tanks and manipulated to perform for food.
Certainly, environmentalists contend, they do not belong at the Sochi Winter Olympics as for-profit show spectacles.
Yet according to reports, a Russian company recently captured seven or eight wild orcas northeast of Japan and plans to display two of them in Sochi during the Games, which run Feb. 7 to Feb. 23.


British Columbia-based researcher Paul Spong is quoted by CBC as saying, “When they’re captured, their families are just ripped apart. And when they’re put into captivity, they’re really subject to sensory deprivation for years and years—it’s hugely damaging to them.”
The U.K . Mirror reported last week that that all of the orcas, or killer whales, were being kept in pens near Vladivostok (in Nakhodka).
Erich Hoyt, a senior research fellow for the U.K.-based Whale and Dolphin Conservation, was quoted as saying: “It’s a sad day for Russia, a sad thing for the Olympics and a very sad situation for two orcas who now will be flying across seven time zones to spend the rest of their lives in captivity.
“Whales and dolphins are intelligent. In captivity they live impoverished lives.”



Russia has not confirmed whether, in fact, it will display orcas in Sochi during the Winter Games. And there appears to be some mystery surrounding the whereabouts of the two orcas, and whether they will even make it to Sochi.
Hoyt said Saturday via email that the two were recently delivered to an aquarium in Moscow.
“The fact is that we don’t know today if the orcas will be in Sochi in time for the Olympics; we only know that the intention was there to get them to Sochi in December and it was postponed,” Hoyt stated.
“There are two orcas in Moscow now that were sent around the same time from the eight being held in Nakhodka. These are also owned by White Sphere, who capture whales and also have aquariums in Moscow and Sochi. It could be that they are training the orcas now and might ship them down to Sochi from Moscow in the days before the Olympics.”
“Blackfish” placed orcas in the spotlight for much of 2013. The documentary scrutinized SeaWorld’s orca program and the treatment of killer whales in captivity.
It created a public relations disaster that included boycotts and celebrity musicians canceling their shows.
Environmental groups are urging the International Olympic Committee to pressure the captors to free all seven orcas, and an online petition  has been set up via Care2 Petitions, to keep the orcas from ending up at the Olympics.
As of Saturday it had received more than 100,000 signatures.
Part of it reads: “The latest development is that host city for the 2014 Winter Olympics, Sochi in Russia, is getting involved. The city has a dolphinarium, and two wild-caught orcas are being flown in, seemingly in the hopes of making more money during the Winter Olympics…
“Tell Russia to release the orcas it has just caught and not become any further involved in this brutal practice.”
Time will tell whether the orcas arrive in Sochi, or whether they ultimately regain their freedom. Few expect the latter to happen, however, because there’s money to be made off captive orcas.