SeaWorld Isn’t a Party Venue—It’s a Prison

A marine park that’s known for animal suffering and death isn’t a place for a party—but some schools didn’t get the memo. Some still think it’s OK to dance the night away next to frustrated, lonely animals who live in misery 24/7.

Activists protesting seaworld

SeaWorld confines whales, dolphins, and others to small concrete tanks, where they slowly go insane from stress and frustration. To create generations of animals the company can exploit for profit, staff sexually abuse and impregnate dolphins and whales, sometimes after drugging them. It’s a business built on the suffering of intelligent, social animals who are denied everything that’s natural and important to them.

If your school is planning an event at SeaWorld or another marine park or shady aquarium, there are steps you can take to get it moved:

  1. First, study up! Research the issues with SeaWorld or the facility in question and come prepared with talking points and facts about the issue.
  2. Meet with administrators and the event planning committee (this could be a student body or the PTA) and present the reasons why the venue should be changed.
  3. Recommend an alternative venue—like a hall or another event space that doesn’t exploit animals.
  4. If decisionmakers don’t budge, don’t stop. Be persistent. Get support from other students by creating an online petition and launching a campaign with Students Opposing Speciesism. E-mail us at [email protected], and check out our guide to creating your own campaign here.
  5. Inform your classmates so that they’ll get behind you! Hand out flyers (we’ll send them to you for free), set up an info table, and organize a film screening of Blackfish or The Cove.
  6. If your school says it’s too late to move the venue this year, get it to commit to never again using a marine park as an event space.

Need inspo? Check out one San Diego student’s campaign—which eventually ended in victory—to relocate his prom from SeaWorld to another venue and another student’s story of moving her homecoming from an aquarium to a venue that doesn’t hurt animals.