Bowing to pressure from animal rights advocates and decreasing attendance over the past few years, SeaWorld San Diego is ending its long-running killer whale show with a final performance by the gigantic black and white orcas on Sunday.
The show in Shamu Stadium has featured the whales jumping, spinning, and tail-slapping the water, entertaining the crowds that once packed in to see them.
The theme park is preparing to unveil a new killer whale show this summer. SeaWorld has described Orca Encounter as an educational experience that will highlight how the whales navigate, eat, and communicate, but critics have pointed out that the whales will still undergo training for the program and will still take cues from trainers.
SeaWorld’s former orca trainer and vice president of zoological operations, Al Garver, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that parkgoers will still see the whales leaping out of the water.
“We want to be able to demonstrate behaviors people would see in the wild with the killer whales and their abilities as a top predator in the sea,” Garver said.
“The vast majority of behaviors people have seen in our shows will be very suitable for demonstrating that."
SeaWorld San Diego has 11 orcas between the ages of 2 and 52.
The final orca show comes just two days after Tilikum, the whale at the center of the 2013 "Blackfish" documentary, died at SeaWorld Orlando on Friday. The whale was estimated to be about 36 years old and had been battling a lung infection, according to park officials.
The killer whale shows at SeaWorld Orlando and San Antonio are also expected to end by 2019.
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