As I’ve mentioned a couple of time, I have a season pass to Marineland and have already been a few times this year. The last couple of times that I’ve gone I’ve spent a lot of time in Friendship Cove to watch the Orca (killer) whales. Before Friendship Cove was finished a few years ago, the whales were in much smaller tanks in King Waldorf’s stadium. They would perform shows in the stadium several times a day, including having someone riding on them. Whether it was pressure from activist groups, or another reason, these sorts of performances have stopped. Friendship Cove is gigantic compared to where they used to live, so there is a lot more room for them to swim around. The only performances now are “splash shows” where the whales do a few tricks like jumping out of the water, splashing people watching with their tail, etc. There are only 4 or 5 performances during the day, and they last about 15 minutes.
I’ve taken quite a few pictures and put them in the Summer 2007 Orca Whale Splash Show gallery. The thumbnails below are a sample of the pictures. You can see more thumbnails and the larger versions of all the pictures in the gallery.
I’ve also put together a 4:30 video of the splash show.