Seaworld's Rhetorical Analysis

SeaWorld claims that Blackfish’s rhetoric is “false and misleading” because it lacks “a shred of scientific support.” But if SeaWorld has dealt the scientific evidence card, then there are plenty of holes within its game play. One of the first claims that SeaWorld makes is that Blackfish’s information is dated. There is validity to that claim: after all, Blackfish relies on trainers who had their heyday in the 1990s. Yet SeaWorld’s scientific evidence is equally dated. SeaWorld backs many of its claims with a paper written in 1998 by Dr. Ingrid Visser. Dr. Ingrid Visser, whose work was cited without her permission, has since decried SeaWorld’s use of her paper in its rebuttal. Dr. Visser is also an outspoken opponent of killer whale captivity.

Blackfish utilizes testimonials from scientific authorities to attack SeaWorld’s treatment of its killer whales. According to Blackfish, SeaWorld is guilty of two major offenses: separating mother and calf pairs, and creating conditions that increase whale-on-whale violence. Rather than address these scientific truths, SeaWorld diverts attention away from them. To combat the accusation of cruelty surrounding mother-calf separations, SeaWorld takes many actions. SeaWorld criticizes the scientists behind the testimonies and the footage used. But it never addresses the fact that mother-calf separations are unnatural. In fact, Dr. Visser’s paper explicitly states that mothers and calves do not leave each other’s sides in the wild. This is another prime example of SeaWorld’s affinity for

However, SeaWorld’s rhetoric attacks the scientists and trainers within the film more than the data. One of SeaWorld’s central targets is Dr. Lori Marino. SeaWorld presents its trump card with the statement that “the film portrays Marino’s statement as if it is the opinion of the scientific community. The Journal of Zoo and Aquarium Research recently published a paper that discusses the history of this very issue. Killer whales in captivity have an excellent standard of living and have access to food and state of the art medical care." Once again, SeaWorld’s wording is key to its rhetoric. By wording this phrase in a specific order, SeaWorld infers that the Journal of Zoo and Aquarium Research paper supports killer whale captivity. However, this is not the case. The paper states that “we are barely catering for the high cognitive skills of of marine mammals." It does not fully advocate the captivity or release of marine