Tommy Lee Gives SeaWorld a Drumming
Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee has told SeaWorld they can’t use any of his music at their marine circus acts.
In a letter to John T. Reilly, president of the SeaWorld San Diego, he says: [readon]
I’m writing to ask you not to play any Motley Crue’s songs at any of SeaWorld’s parks during this sad show. … We don’t want to be a part of making innocent animals’ lives hellish.
… I’ve learned from my friends at PETA that these marine animals are very sensitive to sound, as they communicate by sonar, and loud noises mess with their most basic instincts and drive them more nuts than they already are when trapped in your tanks.
SeaWorld responds that it doesn’t use Mötley Crüe music anyway, and that “PETA is wrong concerning the effect of music on SeaWorld’s killer whales … the volume of music played during parts of our killer-whale shows poses no risk at all to our animals.”
We don’t know what music SeaWorld does or doesn’t play. But it is indeed too loud – and it is entirely unnatural for orcas, who have highly sensitive ears and sonar capabilities, to be held in a pool with the reverberating sound of loud music announcers echoing, and audiences screaming and cheering.
Worse yet is for SeaWorld to describe these intelligent, self-aware beings as “our animals.” They don’t belong to SeaWorld. The ones who were stolen from their families in the wild belong to those families; not to some giant corporation. And the ones who were born in captivity belong to their mothers, from whom they are routinely separated and flown around the country to entertain more unwitting humans at other SeaWorld locations or traded with other marine circuses.