Pub Date: March 24, 2015
4 stars
The question of Orca's in captivity has always been a no-brainer for me. Does anyone really think that 5000-8000 pound marine animals are happy and healthy in glorified swimming pools? Um... no. So, I was in turns mesmerized and horrified by the documentary Blackfish and I thought the addition of career Orca trainers added much authenticity to some of its claims. John Hargrove was one of the trainers interviewed for the documentary and this book is a memoir about his decades long career working with the Killer Whales at SeaWorld. I found this to be an extremely forthright and honest book. This is someone who worked daily with these whales and spent most of his career as an advocate and defender of the SeaWorld corporation. His passion for training whales began young and I found his single-minded dedication to this career fascinating. He notes that his change of heart towards SeaWorld began gradually but he publicly began to speak out after he left SeaWorld after multiple training injuries. SeaWorld has tried to discredit him as a disgruntled former employee but I think he does a good job to quell that criticism here.
This is not an incredibly well written book and there are some strange repetitions but the message still comes out strong and that is really the point of a book such as this. If you liked the documentary Blackfish, than this is definitely a good book to pursue next. I received an electronic galley of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
No comments:
Post a Comment