Dani Harmer Cages Herself on the Beach to Call For SeaWorld Boycott

Dani Harmer Cages Herself on the Beach to Call For SeaWorld Boycott

London – BAFTA award–winning actor and Strictly Come Dancing star Dani Harmer is making a splash in a brand-new PETA campaign in which she puts herself in an orca’s place – that is, inside a cramped tank of water – to protest SeaWorld.

  Photo: © Trevor Leighton

“When I was about 10 years old, I actually went to SeaWorld thinking that it was gonna be this magical place,” Harmer explains in an accompanying video spot. “But actually, when you go there, it’s a completely different story. I was absolutely gobsmacked at the size of the tanks that they’re kept in. And you could just kind of see the sadness in the whales’ eyes and it was absolutely heart-breaking.”

In nature, orcas form complex relationships, work cooperatively to find food, and traverse up to 140 miles of ocean every day. Those at SeaWorld are housed in incompatible groups inside cramped tanks and have even been given the drug diazepam to manage stress-induced aggressive behaviour. More than forty orcas and hundreds of other animals have died on SeaWorld’s watch – many far short of their natural life expectancies.

“I hope that I’m raising my daughter to love and respect animals and to treat them just how human beings should be treated,” says Harmer. “And my 4-year-old completely understands, so I do not understand why adults do not. There is so much that we can do to help these animals. The first one’s pretty obvious: we could just stop going to these places!”

Harmer joins a long list of celebrities – including Gemma Collins, Amanda Holden, Sharon Osbourne, Noah Cyrus, Charlotte Crosby, Paul O’Grady, and the late Sir Roger Moore – who have teamed up with PETA and its international affiliates to speak out against marine-mammal captivity.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” – opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview.For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on FacebookTwitter, or Instagram.

Contact:

Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]

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