Focusing on the Awe and Exploitation of Orcas

Orcas, or killer whales, are the Mickey Mice of marine parks, making fortunes for Sea World and other such amusement venues the way cartoon characters turn huge profits at Disneyland.

These complex, intelligent, unique creatures are not cartoons, however, and using them and other animals from the wild as clowns and entertainers in relatively small enclosures is a continuing moral issue in some quarters.

The issue is addressed powerfully in a new “Frontline” documentary this week titled “A Whale of a Business”--a strong, opinionated PBS program that makes the high-profile campaign to liberate “Free Willy” star Keiko from his Oregon tank a metaphor for the stormy seas that sometime buffet the billion-dollar-a-year marine amusement industry.

Whales, from orcas to sperms, also star this weekend in the latest of a series of Discovery Channel specials on animal species. Although misleadingly rosy at times and ignoring current disputes over commercial whaling, producer David Reed’s “The Ultimate Guide: Whales” is a gorgeous, smart, highly rewarding hour that approaches its majestic subjects with awe and reverence.

Filling the screen here is nature’s graceful choreography, from 1,000 belugas massing in an estuary riverbed to molt their skins to a gargantuan whale rising from the open sea like some primordial force. The more magnificent the sights, the more tragic seem the fates of some of these species that have been hunted into near oblivion.

Much, much, much lower on the food chain, meanwhile, was “Animal Attractions: Amazing Tales From the San Diego Zoo,” Sunday’s “Nature” special on PBS that was a flat-out infomercial for that zoo, a program notable for narrator/executive editor George Page’s unwavering zest for “animal attractions that bring us ever closer to our fellow creatures.”

Our fellow creatures in captivity.

The hour’s most symbolic footage showed California condors, once all but extinct, being reintroduced to their natural habitat and soaring high over the wild that other zoo animals would never experience.

While the program followed zoo mating attempts and the development of newborns and polar bear cubs brought in for the facility’s new “Polar Bear Plunge” exhibit, Page spoke of “a living, breathing celebration of life, a glimpse into the wonders of the wild.” But . . . it wasn’t the wild. Later he added: “It is only here at the zoo that we could get insights into the lives of wild animals, creatures who otherwise we could never come to know at all.”

“Animal Attractions” also visited the more spacious San Diego Wild Animal Park but dwelt mostly on the zoo--without addressing any of the criticisms that have been leveled at it by some animal rights activists.

If you want to learn about animals, better to watch Tuesday’s “Frontline.”

Especially refreshing about whale documentaries is their omission of cheetahs chasing down Thomson’s gazelles and lions gnawing on wildebeests--the grisly sequences of choice for one wildlife special after another. It happens, it’s life and death in the wild, message delivered. So enough already!

Even harder to watch, though, is the recent footage in “Frontline” of Japanese fishermen trapping and slaughtering scores of dolphins and whales during a day at the office, as part of a selection process that captures some of these lucrative animals for theme parks. Naomi Rose of the Humane Society of the United States observes here: “They are mammals, they do have large brains, they do experience extremely strong emotions. . . . It’s so horrible to watch them [the fishermen] trying to kill these animals, ‘cause they’re so difficult to kill.”

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Yet so easy to market as star performers and make into profit centers at such theme parks as sprawling Sea World, whose owner, Anheuser Busch, sees it, in part, as “a positive setting in which to showcase our products,” according to an annual report for the company quoted by “Frontline” narrator-reporter Linden MacIntyre.

Hanging out at theme parks while researching a book on them, Susan Davis, who teaches communications at the University of California at San Diego, found “incredible clustering of all kinds of stores, souvenir stores, food concession stores, photo concession stores” and others. “This is a landscape that tells you on the one hand, if you come here, you’ll be doing something good for the oceans,” Davis says here. “And consume, consume, consume, consume.”

The millions and millions of people who pass through these turnstiles surely take a more positive view of marine parks, most of them likely agreeing with Sea World’s head veterinarian, Jim McBain, that these “collections” of animals are educational. “For children, I think these experiences are a lifetime of value,” he tells MacIntyre. Others echo that.

What of the animals’ lifetimes, though? “The tank is bad” for orcas, says Ric O’Barry, the former chief trainer on “Flipper” who now opposes putting animals in captivity.

For example, take Keiko, who got famous fast by playing the emancipated orca in “Free Willy” after beginning his aquatic-tricks career in Canada before being shipped to Mexico City. There, MacIntyre says, the killer whale’s health suffered and he became a “sorry spectacle” while consigned to a small pool with warm water, before Hollywood came calling with a three-picture deal. After he played a freed orca so persuasively on the screen, Keiko’s own freedom seemed a logical next step.

Except it’s not that easy, as noted in this hour produced by Renata Simone and Neil Docherty. Oblivious to Keiko in his Oregon rehabilitation tank is the controversy swirling about him, with some foes of animal captivity demanding his release and Sea World officials and others insisting that returning him to the sea could be a death sentence, given his dependency on humans for 18 years.

Footage of the re-education of Keiko seems to bear that out, for there he is in his tank, one of a species called the “world’s deadliest marine predator,” clearly unable to feed himself, nuzzling like a toy a live fish he’s supposed to be eating.

Even Davis sees the crusade to free Keiko not as environmental activism but as “some kind of weird spectacle that’s built around a celebrity animal.” Another way of viewing it: Celebrity animals themselves are the spectacle.

* “A Whale of a Business” airs on “Frontline” at 9 p.m. Tuesday on KCET-TV Channel 28. “The Ultimate Guide: Whales” airs at 8 p.m. Sunday on cable’s Discovery Channel.