Photos: Captive Mother and Baby Make a Splash Outside Cardiff TUI Store in Anti-Marine Park Display
Photos: Captive Mother and Baby Make a Splash Outside Cardiff TUI Store in Anti-Marine Park Display
Cardiff, Wales – Today, dressed as “orcas,” a PETA supporter and her baby were confined inside a tiny tank outside the TUI Holiday Store in Cardiff to blast the travel company for selling tickets to Loro Parque, a notoriously cruel marine park in Tenerife, Spain. The action comes after the birth of a baby orca in late March at the marine abusement park – and as TUI ramps up the number of flights from Cardiff to Tenerife.
TUI – whose animal welfare policy is against breeding cetaceans in captivity for commercial purposes – is the last remaining major travel provider in the UK still selling tickets to marine parks.
Video footage is available here, and images are available here.
“Loro Parque is trying to cash in on a baby orca who was born in a prison-like tank, where he’ll be denied any semblance of a natural life and forced to spend his days performing degrading tricks for tourists,” says PETA Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “PETA is calling on TUI to stop propping up these wretched facilities by ending its ticket sales to marine parks.”
In nature, orcas live in complex matrilineal societies, work cooperatively to find food, and can travel up to 150 miles in a single day. But at wildlife prisons like Loro Parque, orcas and other dolphins and whales are confined for their entire lives to cramped concrete tanks where they can do nothing but swim in circles and fend off attacks from their stressed tank mates.
Jet2holidays, Expedia, Tripadvisor, and over 120 other UK companies have stopped selling tickets to marine parks. More than 202,000 PETA entity supporters have called on TUI to follow suit.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow PETA on Facebook, X, TikTok, or Instagram.
Contact:
Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
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