“Evolve or Go Extinct!”: PETA ‘Dinosaurs’ Storm TUI Store Over Support of Orca Prisons

Cardiff –PETA supporters in dinosaur costumes stormed the TUI Holiday Store in Cardiff today (9 June) to urge the travel giant to get with the times and stop promoting cruel and outdated marine amusement parks, where animals are forced to live in cramped concrete tanks of chemically treated water. The “dinosaurs” carried signs proclaiming “TUI: Get Out of the Dark Ages. Drop Marine Parks!”, “TUI: Your animal welfare policy is Prehistoric” and “TUI: Make Orca Prisons Extinct.”    

More images and footage are available here and here.

“Today’s kind travellers have no interest in supporting the suffering of whales, orcas, and other dolphins who are confined, abused, and forced to perform demeaning tricks for human entertainment,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “TUI is the last major UK travel provider to continue promoting marine abusement parks. The company must evolve, or go extinct.”

In nature, orcas and other dolphins live in large, complex social groups and swim vast distances every day in the open ocean. But at marine amusement parks like SeaWorld and Loro Parque, they spend their days floating listlessly or swimming in circles in tanks comparable in size to a human living in a bathtub. Most die far short of their natural life span, and they often suffer from distressing health conditions that increase their misery.

PETA encourages everyone to urge TUI to stop supporting orca abuse, and join the growing number of major travel companies – including Jet2, EasyJet, and Virgin Atlantic – that have stopped promoting marine parks.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any other way” – points out that when it comes to the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, an orca is a dog is a boy. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow PETA on X, Facebook, or Instagram.

Contact: 

Lucy Watson +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected] 

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