Nevermind the horrific death of a trainer in 2010 by killer whale Tilikum. Or the various other attacks and deaths. Forget about concerns about how many animals SeaWorld takes from the wild and the growing consensus

Orca at SeaWorld, courtesy of Roger Wollstadt

that marine mammals shouldn’t be captive entertainers. Don’t think about how SeaWorld uses Tilikum as the star of its breeding program. Pay no attention to the massive amount of debt the company is in, thanks to the Blackstone Group, the huge private equity firm that bought the chain of 11 amusement parks for $2.7 billion from Anheuser-Busch in 2009, in a classic leveraged buyout that has left the company drowning in debt.

Blackstone now wants the investing public to take over some of the responsibility of SeaWorld, even as it maintains control.

Blackstone just filed the documentation necessary to sell shares in SeaWorld Entertainment during the holiday week between Christmas and New Year’s, so the amount it hopes to raise is unclear so far, though Bloomberg reports it plans to raise at least $500 million. It’ll be a few months before we know exactly, but the financial details contained in its registration form with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal a number of fascinating details about Sea World and how it operates that any animal lover should know.

SeaWorld is deep in debt, but its current owners are paying themselves amazingly well

The SeaWorld – Blackstone story is a classic leveraged buy-out tale of sophisticated investors buying a company, loading it up with debt and using it as a cash machine. Blackstone put up about $1 million of its own money to buy SeaWorld, then put the company $1.3 billion in debt, the Orlando-Sentinel reported at the time of the deal. Now the company is $1.8 billion in debt, thanks to the lavish $610.1 million dividends paid in the last two years.

Blackstone did make the company profitable, but nowhere near that much. In 2011, SeaWorld earned $19.1 million but paid Blackstone a $110.1 million dividend. For the first nine months of 2012, SeaWorld paid Blackstone a $500 million dividend–pretty amazing considering the net income was only $86 million. (Coincidentally the same amount it paid in interest on its loans.) “Blackstone extracts another dividend from SeaWorld” is how  The Deal explained it. Writer David Holley noted that S&P downgraded the company’s debt and Moody’s raised its probability that it would default on its loans.

The question this raises for animal lovers is how it will impact the treatment of SeaWorld’s 67,000 animals. That’s always an issue when you put animals to work for a for-profit enterprise. It’s hard to imagine how being over-leveraged will improve the lives of the animals there.

What you’re buying if you buy Sea World shares

Blackstone lists Sea World Entertainment’s total capitalization at $2.3 billion. That’s not what is being sold to the public; Blackstone wants to keep control of the company, but use the public sale of shares to get cash from the public, in part, to pay off a loan that carries 11% interest. So if you’re buying Sea World shares, you won’t really have much say in how the company is run, but you will help its principal owner, Blackstone, pay down high-interest debt.

Other fun facts from the filing:

Nearly 1 in 5 of their marine mammals was taken from the wild

The S-1 filing, as it’s known, reports that “More than 80% of our marine mammals were born in human care.” That means that almost 20% were pulled from the wild, in places like Taiji, Japan, where the movie The Cove documented dolphin slaughter. The film argues that the fishermen don’t make that much money off dolphin meat, but persist because they can occasionally sell a dolphin to an aquarium for about $28,000. A trained dolphin can be sold for $300,000.

Sea World has 67,000 animals

The company boasts that it has 60,000 fish and 7,000 “marine and terrestrial animals.” Remember, Sea World Entertainment includes the animal parks Busch Gardens, which have about 2,700 animals, ranging from lemurs to flamingoes and elephants. Sea World reports that it possesses 29 killer whales, 151 dolphins, and 115 sea lions.

Sea World considers its breeding program an asset

The financial document calls it “successful and innovative,” and notes their genetic diversity. This is odd because Sea World has been criticized for overusing their most dangerous killer whale, Tilikum, to father too many offspring. Drummer and PETA rep Tommy Lee complained publicly that even though they claim Tilikum won’t have any contact with trainers, somebody is still going to have to touch him intimately to extract more sperm.

Sea World is not too worried about fines from regulators

SeaWorld has to list potential risks to investors. It names animal welfare regulations, but doesn’t seem overly nervous. SeaWorld says say it follows the rules of animal care and even in “unusual instances when we are cited for an alleged deficiency, we are most often given the opportunity to correct any purported deficiencies without penalty.” And even if Sea World does have to pay a fine, it’s usually no big deal. “In the past, when we have been subjected to governmental claims for fines, the amounts involved were not material [emphasis mine] to our business, financial condition or results of operations.”

Case in point: In June 2012, a judge ruled that SeaWorld has to make the workplace safer for trainers, but as lawyer Edward Tan explained, the judge also reduced the fine from $75,000 to $12,000.

Sea World has insurance for when whales attack people 

While Sea World reassures investors that it runs a totally safe place, it has to acknowledge in the risks that could harm its business that “injuries or death, while rare, have occurred in the past and may occur in the future.”

To protect the bottom line, Sea World has a policy for “animal enterprise related businesses in the theme park industry.” That said, Sea World admits that it is worried about premiums going up. “We cannot predict the level of the premiums that we may be required to pay for subsequent insurance coverage, the level of any self-insurance retention applicable thereto, the level of aggregate coverage available, or the availability of coverage for specific risks.” In other words, whale attacks are part of the cost of doing business.

They help rescue more than 500 wild animals a year 

SeaWorld and the other parks do generously help some wildlife. They take in orphaned, injured, sick or abandoned wild animals. They don’t get anything in return; if the animals survive, SeaWorld returns them to the wild. In 40-plus years, they’ve treated more than 22,000 wild patients.

Of your $79 ticket, less than a dime goes to the conservation fund

The parks boast that they fund their own SeaWorld and Busch Gardens Conservation Fund.  Though, truth be told, not all that generously. The fund’s website says, “The parks have contributed more than $50 million to wildlife conservation since 1970.” If it were equally divided annually, that would amount to about $1.2 million a year. The company had sales of $1.2 billion for the first nine months of this year. So if you shell out the $79 for an adult ticket, you can feel good knowing roughly 6 – 8 cents of that is going to conservation.

Where to See Whales in the Wild

	Cameron	Branson
Destination	Marianas Trench	Puerto Rico Trench
Depth	35,800 ft	28,373 ft
Craft	Deep Sea Challenger	DeepFlight Challenger
Material	foam	carbon fiber and titanium
Goal	visit the Mariana trench many times	reach depths of each ocean
Confidence in critters at great depths	“We’d all like to think there are giant squid and sea monsters down there,” he told the Times.	“We know there are gigantic things down there,” he told the Telegraph.
How vehicle moves	vertical, like a seahorse	with wings or flippers, like a dolphin

Luckily the world has more than one eco-minded, genius gazillionaire. Branson and his team hope to visit the Mariana, too, later this year in a different kind of craft. Branson himself will go down to the Puerto Rico trench. That’s the deepest spot in the Atlantic and is about 7,000 feet shallower.

Nobody is sure if anything could really survive that deep. It’s dark and that means not much plant life. It’s cold–and most creatures prefer the warm, shallow water like the mountainous waters that usually abut the sea trenches. Both land formations are formed by tectonic plates squishing and stretching the earth. And then there’s the incredible water pressure, which has made these explorations so difficult and dangerous.

Of course, we’re all hoping someone will find a whole herd of Loch Ness monsters down there. Or at minimum a giant squid. Certainly something better than the shrimp-like creatures Cameron got to see.

Branson is suitably enthusiastic, hoping his craft, which is bigger, can cruise and call in another sub to take pictures, will find something. He’s got a soft spot for fun creatures and has created a lemur haven, despite taking some slack from doubters.

The only other manned mission to the deepest part of the Mariana Trench was in 1960 when the U.S. Navy sent oceanographers Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard down to the bottom. Near the bottom they saw a flatfish, but Walsh told ScienceFriday last week, biologists insist they really didn’t see it.

“Well, just before we landed, we spotted what we thought was a flatfish, a white flat – like a halibut or a sole, a foot long. And that was quite a sighting, if true, of a higher-order marine vertebrate in such – at such a great depth. And it was a bottom-dwelling type of fish, so it meant that it was where it belonged and that there was food down there and sufficient oxygen to support it. Now Jacques Piccard…and I were not ichthyologists. We were engineers. We were, if you would, test pilots of this vehicle trying to prove out its capability. So in the subsequent years, we’ve been advised by all kinds of scientists that we didn’t see that.”

But what if conventional wisdom is wrong?

The first crew never got a good look because they stirred up so much silt. Cameron had to head up early because of a technical problem. He hopes to return. His mission, backed by National Geographic, was always to get down there a few times.

Although the story of two rich geniuses racing in their private subs to the bottom of the ocean is delightful, really Branson didn’t plan to dive to the Mariana Trench himself.  His partner, Chris Welsh, is heading there (and, yes, the trip was delayed). Branson is going on the second of the five legs of the adventure, one for the bottom of each ocean. The Puerto Rico Trench is near a breeding ground for humpback whales (they like shallow, warm water) and plenty of other marine mammals and flying fish near the surface, NOAA has found.

The vessels are slightly different, but both plan on using little helper “lander” craft that go down first and drop bait. Welsh says on their blog: “The Virgin sub is excellent for large scale exploration and identifying areas worthy of more detailed examination, and Jim’s sub is perfect for detailed examination of those sites once found.”

For now let’s remember that not seeing something doesn’t prove it isn’t there. Animal tourists know to well that you can go to the exact location of a previous sighting and come up with nothing after a whole day of patient waiting. It’s as if human beings had only spent a few hours in Alaska and came back thinking it was just snow: it is mainly just snow, but there are also polar bears and walruses in certain parts. I’m just happy there are two gazillionaires willing to go looking for new creatures down there in the least explored place on earth.

Where to SEE WHALES

Read about Branson’s mission to save lemurs

SEE ANIMALS IN AUSTRALIA

Budget deal shafts wolves

Remember how President Obama was supposed to have bravely stood up to House Speaker Boehner demands that to throw a bunch of right-wing political provisions into the budget. The New York Times says that when Boehner asked about the riders on abortion and other policies, he was rebuffed: “Nope. Zero,” the president said to the speaker. Mr. Boehner tried again. “Nope. Zero,” Mr. Obama repeated. “John, this is it.”

Well, the Center for Biological Diversity says not so much. They report that Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) is leading a charge in the Senate that would take wolves off the endangered species list in Idaho and Montana. And maybe lead to the same deal in  Washington and Oregon, too. The near-secret rider would “set a horrific precedent to further undermine the Endangered Species Act by excluding other species on political whim and preventing environmental groups from being able to enforce the law,” the center says.

The Idaho Statesman says Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson successfully slipped the rider into the budget compromise in the house.

It’s basically the same settlement worked out among the USFWS, hunters and those who sued to protect the wolf. But it’s also the same one knocked down by Judge Donald Molloy Saturday. Not a huge surprise, since he was the one who got rid of the first plan to say wolves were endangered in some state but not others. He reasoned that not all the lawsuit parties agreed and that “the District Court must abide by the responsibilities that flow from past political decisions made by the Congress.” So, at least he thinks that that rider will make it okay.

NOAA protects Orcas in Puget Sound–mostly

Because the number of killer whales in Puget Sound has been shrinking as the number of whale-watching boats have been climbing, NOAA made the rules for whale-watching boats tougher. They’ll now have to stay back 200 yards. But, like many whale-watching regulations, the rules leave out some boats. You also can’t intercept a whale or lay in wait in its path.

They do include all types of personal watercraft: motor boats, sail boats and kayaks. So it means that rules apply–at least theoretically–to the personal and rental craft that often bother marine mammals the most. But they specifically exclude vessels actively fishing commercially, cargo ships in lanes and government and research vessels, the San Juan Islander says.

NOAA originally proposed setting up a kind of orca summer sanctuary on San Juan Island’s west side. But they caved to fishing pressure and say they’re still thinking about this part. Maybe just a smaller sanctuary? It’s amazing how that manatees in Florida understand that their little penned off areas are no-go zones for people.

Pennsylvania moves porcupines from “protected” to “open season” after four complaints in four years

After 30 years of protecting porcupines, the Pennsylvania game commission is set to declare open season–meaning you can kill them anytime, anywhere. It’s always been legal to kill porcupines that have been causing damage, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, but some of the people who wanted to kill them were apparently confused by the rules and complained. The Inquirer says data shows the state only received four reports of porcupine damage in the last four years. And they say that the game commission member Dave Putnam “acknowledged the scarcity of porcupine complaints and lack of data.” They haven’t even bothered to survey how many porcupines they have before they start allowing shooting them all.

	Where to SEE WHALES
	Where to SEE WOLVES (plus coyote, coywolf and any wild canid)

The Japanese government continues to reassure the world. They’ve closed off fishing nearby. The ocean dilutes the toxins. The common radioactive material, iodine, has a half-life of just 8 days. But not everyone is so confident. Japanese National Federation of Fisheries Cooperatives says the toxic water will kill off their business regardless of whether it kills the fish. They’ve shut off the big leak, but continue to dump less radioactive water. Airborne particles also end up in the water.

“My biggest concern is the lack of information. We still don’t know the whole range of radioactive compounds that have been released into the ocean, nor do we know their distribution,” Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, told Grossman. “We have a few data points from the Japanese — all close to the coast — but to understand the full impact, including for fisheries, we need broader surveys and scientific study of the area.”

The Japanese news service, NHK, reported cesium-137 a million times the legal limit at least 20 miles from the plant. Xinhua says low levels of cesium-137 and -134 have turned up in 22 of 34 coastal provinces. The Christian Science Monitor reported that the Japanese plant has already released 80% of the amount cesium-137 released by Chernobyl–and that’s only 10% of the amount it has in the three reactors in worst shape.

Kyodo News advises the Japanese that the big worry is Cesium, which has a 30-year half life and “tends to accumulate in the muscle…It is also possible for it to become concentrated in bigger fish in the food chain.” One study shows the half life in fish may be only 50 days–but that may just mean they urinate it out–back into the water. Kyodo recommends discarding of fish skins and offal. Fish high up the food chain are pretty much the same ones you avoid for mercury poisoning: tuna, shark, swordfish, king mackerel and tilefish. (And for the Japanese, dolphins and whales.)

Grossman did a thorough job of tracking the marine life impacts of other radiation spills in the ocean. Here’s what she reports.

• A UK plant released cesium into the Irish Sea in the 1950s and contaminated fish, seals and porpoises. A 1999 study found those marine mammals still had 300 times the radiation as the water.
• Radioactive material from Sellafield and from the nuclear reprocessing plant at Cap de la Hague in France spread to the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans.
• The Russians are not forthcoming on where and why they’ve released radiation, but in the 1990s, however, seals died of blood cancer in the Barents Sea and millions of starfish, shellfish, seals and porpoises died in the White Sea.

It’ll be a long time before we know the impact of the radioactive water release around Japan.

Marine biologist Wallace J. Nichols started the project as part of The Ocean Foundation a couple years ago, but even then hoped to turn it into something bigger. “We figured  if we were successful, then we’d wannt to expand it so it could be bigger than turtles,” says director Brad Nahill. Now that they’ve had 250 travelers and volunteers, they’re branching out to become a kind of clearinghouse of ecotours that you can trust actually support the animals and their human neighbors.

The trips aren’t cheap. They seem to range about $300 a day, but some are more exotic, like a $6,000, 11-day, Namibia and Botswana safari, not including airfare. A couple that are pretty affordable like a 5-day swim with whale sharks adventure in Mexico for $700 or a 3-day $800 trip in southern California to help study whales. Eventually, they’ll let other outfits apply, but they’ll still have to meet strict criteria that shows they support the animals and local community. At least 5% of the income has to goes to local conservation or development and at least half the guides have to be from the country where the tour is based, for example. And, just like SeeTurtles, they’ve got something of everyone from hands-on volunteers to socially responsible vacationers.

Galapagos Penguin

Galapagos Islands drop rat poison

Normally conservationists are not so fond of rat poison, especially on the hallowed ground of the Galapagos. But a coalition of environmental groups got together to figure out how to get rid of the invasive black rats, Norway rats, and house mice that are making life difficult for Galapagos penguins and 11 other endangered species. They’ve captured 20 hawks who would likely eat the poisoned rodents. Wildlife Extra

Where to Go See Odd Birds

Didn’t conservatives tell you Amtrak was anti-American?

An Amtrak train just outside Washington, D.C., hit a bald eagle that was eating a dead deer on the tracks near Abderdeen, MD. Baltimore Sun

Orcas headed to Seattle

A group on the coast near Island split in two, one headed north the other south. West Seattle Blog and The Whale Trail

Welsh Monks welcome red squirrels to their private island

Cistercian monks who farm Caldey Island off the west coast of Wales have invited red squirrels to their little predator-free island in hopes of saving the species. The monks–known as Bernardines or White Monks (from their frocks)–live an especially austere life modeled on the time of St. Benedict. MP Simon Hart supports the plan. Wales has been trying to save the cheeky squirrels, which only survive on the Isle of Anglesey, the Clocaenog Forest in the north and the Tywi valley in mid Wales. BBC

NYC Audubon hoping to convince architects to consider hawks and other birds in their design The Local

Grossed out by New Yorkers sicking dogs on rats? Hey, it’s a tradition

New Yorkers have a long, yucky history with rats. They used to fight them in pits and throw in dogs. Ephemeral NY via Gothamist

Westchester County’s big annual Eagle Fest has been cancelled because of sleety weather for Saturday. Eagle Fest

Check out all the other eagle watching events this weekend

South American bear was biggest ever–11 feet tall National Geographic

Coyote in Trap

Nova Scotia amazingly still paying a $20 coyote bounty

They hope to kill 4,000 this year, which many local residents think is absurd. Paying bounties to promote hunting and trapping largely went out of favor in the 1960s and 1970s and is blamed for all kinds of ecological havoc. Chronicle Herald

Poachers bring cut Finland’s wolf population by up to  16% in one year. Now only 150 left. YLE

South Dakota votes to allow ranchers to run down coyotes on snowmobiles. Peta

Where to Go See Wolves

Wild bald eagle tries to woo captive at Orange County Zoo

A wild bald eagle–presumably male, but nobody knows–is lurking outside the enclosure of Olivia, the zoo’s 6-year-old bald eagle, who is non-releasable. Discovery

Russia’s Antarctica Lake so far not turning up much

Russian scientists haven’t yet pierced Lake Vostok, the largest frozen Antarctic lake and a big mystery since it’s been cut off from the rest of the world for maybe a million years. American scientists don’t want them to in case they mess it up, NPR reports. But the BBC says that finding anything interesting is unlikely. The best chance was for there to be warm sea vents, but the ice they’ve broken so far doesn’t show any evidence of that.

Chronic boat speeder has to forfeit boat after killing manatee Miami Herald

Sea World trainers won’t have to get in water with orcas

Sea World is debuting a new show that won’t require trainers to get in the water with killer whales, which have sometimes killed them. Orlando Sun-Sentinel

Parrots mostly left-handed, Australian researchers find. They favor their left eye and claw. Telegraph

New Mexico wants to protect science teachers who teach anti-science. WIRED

Mexican gray wolf

Endangered Mexican Wolf Count up to 50

50 endangered Mexican wolves live in the wild, including two released this month (the first released in years in the stalled and mismanaged reintroduction program). Last year there were only 42 lobos and several were shot by ranchers. But 14 pups survived. AZCentral

Georgia may cut hunting lands

To cut expenses the state may not lease 25,000 of its 1 million “wildlife management areas,” the AP reports, but doesn’t mention how much money it would save. They probably won’t close any, just make them smaller. They also want to charge hikers and birders–which is fair, so long as non-hunters start getting a say in wildlife policy.

Pink dolphins in Pakistan died from fishing with chemicals

Fishermen have been arrested for using “toxic chemicals” to fish after six Indus blind pink dolphins showed up dead on river banks in Pakistan. The country recently redid its fishing license system and it’s all gone to hell. Express Tribune

Sri Lanka’s budding whale watching industry better set up some rules

Passengers don’t have safety equipment and captains chase whales, a biologist says. Lankan Business Online

NJ expects crowds for 10th annual Cumberland County Eagle Festival WildNJ

Happy Groundhog Day

History of the holiday Terrierman

Groundhog Trivia National Wildlife Federation

A whale watching boat from the popular Mirissa Water Sports / PORE

Now that Sri Lanka crushed the rebel Tamil Tigers in 2009, what are its armed forces supposed to do? Go whale watching. That’s what defense secretary Gotabhaya Rajapaksa ordered. The stilted official Sri Lanka newspaper the Daily News says the Navy will convert the “A 543 passenger transport vessel” to whale watching so that the government can “realize its aim of becoming the Miracle of Asia.”

Sri Lanka is no stranger to whale watching and other kinds of animal tourism, going back at least a decade. But the grinding war put a damper on both tourism and biological research.

The militaristic announcement says the Navy will sail on 3- and 6-hour cruises from October to February between Colombo to Kalpitiya. Don’t worry, it’s rates will be “very affordable.” They expect to entertain foreigners and locals since “Sri Lanka is privileged with many resources which is hardly visible in other countries.”

Despite the military tone of the operation, it’s sweet how Sri Lanka seems to banking big on whale-watching as part of a green economy. For more than two decades research on whales ground to a halt as the Tigers waged their unsuccessful battle for independence. In 2003 researchers returned and found a huge concentration of blue whales, plus fin whales (Balaenoptera physelus), humpback whales (Megaptera novceanglias), sperm whale (Physeter catodor) (found from Yala to Trincomalee) and minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata).

The same waters have plenty of private dolphin cruises to see the island’s five dolphin species: Risso’s (Grampus grigeus), Fraser’s (Lagenodelphis hosei), bottlenose (Turiops truncates), spinner (Stenella longirostrus) and pantropical spotted (Stenella attenuata). The government is also pushing fishermen to alter their gill nets so they don’t kill as many spinner dolphins as by-catch.

Southern Sri Lanka: Dondra Head, Sri Lanka’s southern tip, gets migrating whales in its super-deep water from November to April. The coast off Mirissa gets blue, humpback and sperm whales during that time. In the north, Kalpitiya gets pods of thousands of dolphins.

Whales, dolphins and seals moving into New York harbor NY Daily News

Where to Go See Whales

Elephants like their new tunnel
Kenyan elephants start using underpass five days after it opened. The $250,000 tunnel is part of a $1 million wildlife corridor that connects two populations. Richard Branson of Virgin paid for a good chunk of it. Chicago Tribune

Tompkins Square hawk eats squirrel AnimalTourism

Wolf sightings
Africa may have a new species of wolf in Eritrea, Science Daily says. Colorado says they don’t quite believe a guy who says he saw a wolf in Fort Collins.

Maybe animals getting used to people isn’t so bad
J.E.S. Higham and E.J. Shelton question the traditional notion that animals getting used to humans (habituation) “by definition, is undesirable.” They say that the category needs to be broken down further into how animals react: avoidance/approach behaviours, tolerance, habituation and sensitisation.   Tourism Managment

Norwegians castrate more reindeer to cope with global warming

Reindeer without testicles don’t waste energy on mating, grow bigger and let little ones eat more, Norwegian reindeer herds have found. Huffington Post

Cat Permanently Lives in Tree
Almond the cat was born in a tree and doesn’t want to leave. So the nice guy who lives next to the tree brings Almond food and created a shelter against the weather. YouTube

Florida wildlife cops catch a 15-foot, 150-pound python that somebody used to keep as a pet Chicago Tribune