Seaworld to phase out killer whale show

While I was early calling the top in the big leaders of entertainment like Disney in this post (it was a 3rd and not a 5th) I did get one thing right in that post which many would not have expected.  I wrote, "At the other end of the spectrum, I commented before on Seaworld crashing.  For the record, if I did to animals what Seaworld does to Orcas, I would be jailed for animal abuse.  I predict that before this crash is over, Seaworld will be forced to release their Orcas back into the wild and to stop catching new ones for their shows."

The green emphasis was original.  Today's headlines indicate that this is the new direction for Sea World.  It's not that having Orcas in captivity isn't a really interesting thing to be able to do but conservative people understand that these are intelligent animals which we have captured and enslaved for our selfish enjoyment.  We force them to go in circles in tiny little pools.  It's actually sad to watch.  That might sound like a tree hugging liberal point of view but it is actually conservative.  Live and let live.  Don't enslave even if you have the ability to do it.  Conservatives believe in an intrinsic right and wrong.  Might does not make right.  As the mood waxes conservative, SeaWorld profits are off a cliff and they are finally responding to the pressure.

If SeaWorld wants to survive it's going to have to change.  I think it should try to augment its soon to be missing Orca show revenue with other revenue streams that, for example, take advantage of the new ultra high definition video technology to stream live underwater events into a big theater, perhaps even making it interactive for the crowd with a cell phone app, etc.  In other words, the crowd can vote in real time if the diver half way round the world in some beautiful ocean where something interesting is happening (like tuna migration, shark gatherings, sailfish mating, coral spawning, etc.) does action X or action Y next.  Then, in awesome super high def, perhaps even a 360 degree theater, the crowd gets an even more immersive experience of sight and sound than they received by watching Shamu flip water on them with his tail.

SeaWorld is also blowing it if it doesn't launch an open sea drone which uses satellite comms to stream back what it is finding out there.  People should be able to track the drone in near real time and, again, vote using an app where it should go next.  The whole thing should be solar powered and self sufficient.  The tech is all there and it is relatively cheap.  Things like this would go a long way toward rebuilding the SeaWorld brand.