Photos: “Chained Orcas” Confront TUI at Manchester Airport

Photos: “Chained Orcas” Confront TUI at Manchester Airport

Manchester –Today, PETA supporters dressed as captive orcas and bound in chains gathered at Manchester Airport – TUI’s primary UK transport hub – and called on the travel giant to stop selling tickets to facilities that keep orcas and other dolphins imprisoned in tanks. The animal defenders held a giant banner reading “TUI: Cruelty Doesn’t Fly. Drop Dolphin Prisons”, while “orcas” in chains lay in front of it holding signs reading “Free Me!”.

The demonstration comes as TUI remains the last major travel provider in the UK to promote and sell tickets to dolphin prisons, despite mounting public concern over the welfare of captive marine mammals.

Images are available here.

“No holiday memory is worth a lifetime in a tank,” says PETA’s Senior Campaigns Manager Kate Werner. “While other major travel companies have stopped promoting marine abusement parks, TUI is still cashing in on the misery of orcas and other dolphins. It’s time for TUI to axe dolphin prisons from its itineraries.”

In nature, orcas and other dolphins live in large, complex social groups and swim vast distances every day in the open ocean. But at facilities  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 perpetuate their misery.

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment or abuse in any way” – points out that when it comes to the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a bull is a dog is a boy. 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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