Captive Orca Spotlight Stories: This is Gudruns story. Gudrun was caught close to the coast of Iceland on 25 October 1976. She spent time at Dolfinarium Harderwijk in the Netherlands until she moved to SeaWorld Orlando in 1987. She is the mother of Taima and Nyar, who both also died young. Gudrun had perfect markings and an unusually straight dorsal fin for a captive whale so she was used often on the slide-out to let children and trainers sit on her, often while she was heavily pregnant. Nyar was a sickly baby and often was visibly weak. She did not do well in captivity. During shows Gudrum appeared to try to drown her several times. Her daughter Taima would go on to do this to her own calves as it is speculated she learned the odd behavior from her mother as she watched. Nyar only lived to be 2 years. Several months before Nyars death in 1996 Gudrun went into labor again, SeaWorld had bred her before she would have bred again in the wild as it takes a lot out of a mother. She was in labor for 20 hours and was unable to deliver. SeaWorld used a metal hook to remove the dead calf and used a winch to pull it out. This caused internal bleeding inside Gudrun. She died 4 days later. Gudrun and others like her suffer in captivity. You can help stop it by not attending marine parks and by spreading the word. ~Kimberly Miller
Posted on: Sat, 22 Mar 2014 16:13:01 +0000
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