Are marine parks killing animals?

All my life, I have grown up sharing a home with multiple animals at a time. Horses, fish, dogs, cats — no matter the specie, all creatures were objects of my love and interest. Even as a toddler I remember having an acute sense of their feelings: I considered all the family pets my closest and most trustworthy family. To this day, I still do. I was the child that bought all the Barbie sets, threw away the dolls, and kept their horses. To some extent, human beings failed to interest my younger self. I can’t say the same now — especially because Harry Edward Styles exists in the world — but I am still no less in love with animals than I was the moment I was born.

If there is one thing I would tell people about animals, it is this: Don’t go to Sea World. You may have heard of this anti-marine park movement before, or you may have not. But this campaign is one I have held close to my heart ever since I learned about it.

This i believe

I believe in oceans. I believe in rippling sheets of blue and black that stand as gateways to a world entirely different from our coarse, material one. I believe in dolphins, in whales and clownfish and stealthy tiger sharks. As a child I’d dream of existing in the ocean, sharing fantasies of a coral home and a scaled, tail-bearing lower half with many of my peers. The ocean has always been a significant part of my family life, with annual trips to the Monterey Bay Aquarium and snorkeling trips in Palawan that never failed to leave me open-mouthed and inspired. My childhood aspiration was, for many years, to become a marine biologist.

But as a child I was unaware of the plight of the sea. Like the rest of the human population I viewed the marine ecosystem as infinite. I saw the world’s fish and cetaceans as free, powerful beings. Sea World was a display of their intuition, capabilities and love for human contact.

I now cringe at how incorrect I’ve been. Where, in the long hours of the school day, are we taught of the dolphin slaughters in Japan? Where are we taught of the impossible rate of fish being extracted from the waters and a rate of marine deaths in ocean parks that are unheard of in the wild? I became aware of how thousands of aquatic mammals are confined in metal tanks and caught and killed with hooks through their sides due to a single heartfelt documentary I happened to watch. Sea World is depicted as a living hell. It’s a billion-dollar industry, too. Tell me, how many of us are aware that orca whales possess a part of the brain humans don’t have that is meant solely for sensing emotion? Does it occur to us that creatures so unlike humans can be even more self-aware? Now, it seems that we aren’t as emotionally advanced as we once thought. So maybe it’s time the world turned its focus on the masked horror of marine parks, and listens as a mother whale calls for its calf, or watch as a dolphin commits suicide in her trainer’s arms. I believe in dolphins, in whales and clownfish and stealthy tiger sharks. Because I believe in oceans. This I believe.

By the way, that was a short speech I wrote about two years ago for a social studies project in eighth grade, and I am extremely happy to finally be able to share it with a wider audience.

Now I urge you all: watch Blackfish or The Cove. Both are astounding documentaries that reveal the dark truth behind Sea World. If you won’t listen to me, maybe you’ll listen to pop superstar Harry Styles. He recently told fans during a concert in Chicago to avoid visiting the marine parks, and his words have had an astounding online impact on the brand — a 400 percent increase of mentions, most of them negative.

Someone is watching out for the oceans after all.

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Nikki H. Huang, 15, is a student at the International School Manila. She is an avid equestrienne.