Bubbles, a heartbreaking story

This is Bubbles and her story: Captured all the way back in 1966, Bubbles endured a very long life of training, performing, and endless captivity – and yet most people will only ever speak of how much fun they had staring at her.
To hear SeaWorld tell it, Bubbles was a beloved resident during her “legendary career” at the park. Her “career” started when she was taken from her home in the ocean to perform at Marineland of the Pacific. When the park closed in 1987 she was moved to SeaWorld.
We can only imagine how traumatic these moves must have been for her. Of course, to use the word career would imply that this is what Bubbles always wanted to do with her life. It implies a life of fun and joy and covers up the fact that this was once a creature who roamed freely. She never needed a career but her life of captivity paid for the careers of so many other people at SeaWorld.
While she sat in a pool of chemicals with no stimulation her family swam hundreds of miles a day out in the ocean. Not only are pilot-whales highly intelligent, they are also very social animals. Most swim in pods of anywhere from 20-100! Even more incredible is that pilot whales stay with their mother’s pod for their whole lives. For certain Bubbles absence was felt after she was abducted. We can never know if in her final days she remembered life in the ocean or still felt the pull of missing her pod.
Bubbles, their longest resident, money-maker, and star “attraction” passed away on June, 2016. This short-finned pilot whale was believed to be the oldest of her kind in a zoological park and while her death received plenty of media coverage due in part to the never-ending bad press cycle that SeaWorld can’t escape, she was also remembered for all of the joy that she brought to visitors of SeaWorld. And that may be the saddest part of all. Rest in peace Bubbles, your stolen freedom will never be forgotten.
Info©: https://www.onegreenplanet.org/
Photo©: Sea World Parks and Entertainment