Long Gone Wild

Greetings again from the darkness. As described here, Gabriela Cowperthwaite's 2013 documentary BLACKFISH "changed everything" in regards to Orcas being held in captivity. But then Bill Neal's documentary proceeds to lay out all of the problems that still exist and some new challenges that are occurring in Russia and China. So maybe everything hasn't changed.

We are told that in North America, there are 22 killer whales in captivity, 20 of which are at Sea World parks. These "killer whales" are really Orcas, the majestic black and white creatures that are featured in Sea World shows and promotional paraphernalia. In the wild, they hunt and feed on Blue whales, the largest animals on Earth. In captivity, they are fed flash-frozen fish from a bucket, and forced to swim in pools too shallow to protect their skin from the sun ... and worse, separated from their family and community.

The film provides a timeline and history of Orcas in captivity. 1965 was the year that Ted Griffin's Seattle aquarium put Namu on public display. After that, Shamu became the stage name for the main attraction at all Sea World parks. Of course, the film touches on Tillikum, the main focus of BLACKFISH and the Orca involved with the publicized death of a trainer. Tillikum was also the sire to many offspring used in the Sea World community.

Filmmaker Neal includes interviews with authors, scientists, former trainers, and researchers. Author David Kirby ("Death at Sea World") and Biologist Dr. Naomi Rose are two featured players who bring much insight to the topic. The "wildlife trade" now involves Russia capturing Orcas in the wild and then selling to China for millions of dollars. China is building marine parks modeled on what the United States had in the 1960's, and the poor facilities are a major concern for those involved with protecting the species.

For many years, science and education were the defense offered for keeping these animals in captivity. It's now very obvious that entertainment ... or more precisely, profit, is the driving force. The film leaves us with the updated statistics. Worldwide there are now 60 Orcas being held in captivity in 15 parks throughout 8 countries. The heartfelt plea from those involved with the Whale Sanctuary Project is "Don't buy a ticket". If only everything had really changed.

Hadn't heard of this until the last couple of days when Netflix recommended it way down the list of recommendations and wondered why given I'm an active supporter of Dolphin Project, Orca Research, Whale Sanctuary etc

.Realised within the first fifteen minutes why this managed to slip through the net (no pun intended but left anyway) when it just raked up and went over old ground focusing on SeaWorld, reinterviewing some of the people that featured in Blackfish and them saying almost exactly the same things almost word for word. That's not to say their take and insight isn't relevant or worthy of the world hearing but it's been heard already and this documentary claimed to focus on the events since Blackfish in particular ongoing captures in Russia and China. It barely skims the surface with a few minutes of footage inside an unnamed Chinese marine park, a few minutes of footage from Russian boats during a capture effort and that's it

A brief summary to pickup where Blackfish left off would have sufficed but should have then moved its audience on to a more pressing, urgent and current issue being ongoing captures and trading between Russia and China all of which has taken place entirely from under world's attention as everyone seemed so hell bent on screaming out SeaWorld which despite all their many and incredulous faults have at least not been involved in wild captures for decades.

There are some reliably solid experts interviewed such as the brilliant Naomi Rose, RIc O'Barry and familiar faces from Blackfish namely the Jeff Ventre and Carol Ray. Trouble is the stories and accounts are as familiar with Carol talking about Kalina's separation, Lori speaking of how the orca brain was put through an MRI the results of which astounded them and more explanation of how being inside empty concrete tanks is a form of sensory deprivation and causing these animals to go stir crazy.

Footage is in large parts old / from the original capture or lifted from other existing sources i,e National Geographic / PBS and towards the end where they finally mention how plans for sanctuaries could be the simplest solution that would benefit all, there's not even any reference or mention of existing plans and designs already drawn up which are brilliant. Instead they interview people on boats with "NOT ACTUAL SITE" so there's literally no point in showing them on that stretch of water.What a horribly missed opportunity and disgracefully lazy attempt to pretend it is worthy of or the next best thing since Blackfish.

The narrative darts from one place to another and was so fragmented, amateurish and hard to take seriously I stopped the movie less than 20 mins in to find out who made it and the writer / director was someone I had never heard of before. A quick Google uncovered previous work such as "E! Hollywood True Stories!" and thousands of pennies dropped all at once.

This isn't so much a follow up to Blackfish but more a dreadful, lazy effort and whatever your thoughts on captivity or personal like / dislike for this overall, be under no illusion that it is the much awaited followup and biggest thing since Blackfish.

It's a Sunday afternoon documentary on PBS at best.

If you have any media literacy at all you can see that these activists are desperately trying to keep the show going. If you look into their 'rehabilitation' program it's actually a sea pen, and a relatively small one at that. The reason that all of the versions of this plan have a small operating area is to keep the animals close for public viewing. In the video linked below, Dr. Ingrid Visser outlines the current plans for how this is intended to work. I understand that they can't be released into the wild, but this is frankly just a more scenic, slightly bigger cage, endorsed by ex-trainers at sea world. If they really cared, they'd increase the size of the cage and give the customers binoculars instead of making sea world 2. They have the gall to say 'we're on the right side of history'. In New Zealand where I live you can't call something a sanctuary if the animals are penned in -- then it's a reserve. This documentary is right about its criticisms of sea world etc, but straight up lies to your face about its own motives.

Https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6wHrZXyrOg.