Shainna's Reviews > Death at SeaWorld: Shamu and the Dark Side of Killer Whales in Captivity

Slice this book in half and you've got all the information you're going to get from David Kirby's collection of accounts and arguments against captivity of whales. The rest was biography of a handful of people, which was not what I signed up for when I picked to read this book. I wanted to read about whales, not about Dr. Naomi Rose's time researching. Pages devoted to recounting people's histories bored me. Outside of his biographical narrative of the humans, most of his arguments were redundant. At least twice per chapter, or so it felt, Kirby felt it necessary to point out the drastic difference in life expectancy of wild vs captive orcas. There were also editing errors that seemed to have been missed in my ebook version as well. His writing left much to be desired.

There are good points raised in this book, so please don't think I support the captivity industry nor that I'm giving this book two of five stars for its stance. Unfortunately, it didn't present the pro-captivity side very well, which is somewhat understandable as SeaWorld didn't work with him, despite his requests. That said, was there really no one else to explain why they felt captivity was a good option for orcas? Had SeaWorld worked with him, the poorly represented argument would have stood as a testament that captivity is not a good thing.

Most of the information he presents is available online for free. Even some of the autopsies he cites are available as well as police reports/911 calls, and video of various incidents with the orcas. (Google "The Orca Project" and you'll have most, if not all the information presented in this book).

It's a shame that this book wasn't better, I was really hopeful.