Meet the Scientist Who Is Standing Up To SeaWorld to Save Orcas From Captivity

Dr. Ingrid Visser has dedicated her life to improving the welfare of killer whales.



Ingrid Visser assisting at a 1997 killer whale stranding in Mangawhai, Northland, New Zealand. (Photo: Terry Hardie/Orca Research Trust)

http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/04/07/ingrid-visser-killer-whale-expert-activist-lolita-morgan-sea-world?cmpid=tpdaily-eml-2015-04-07

April 07, 2015 By David Kirby

David Kirby has been a professional journalist for 25 years. His third book, Death at Seaworld, was published in 2012.


As activists turn up the heat against marine parks that keep killer whales in captivity, Ingrid Visser is helping fan the flames.

The marine biologist has dedicated her life to studying, rescuing, filming, and even swimming with killer whales. Her scientific work advances knowledge that helps killer whales in the wild, but Visser has also done battle with companies such as SeaWorld that keep the animals in tanks. Her efforts include founding New Zealand’s Orca Research Trust and helping to establish the World Cetacean Alliance and Dolphinaria Free Europe.

Visser established the world’s first photo-identification catalog of whale pods in New Zealand and Antarctic waters. She has worked on a couple of documentaries about the animals and assisted in several rescues of stranded whales. She's even written a children’s book about one of them.

“I’ve been interested in orca ever since I was a kid,” Visser said in an email. (She considers the Latin name for killer whales, “orca,” to be both singular and plural.) “I started researching them in 1992 and started my Ph.D. not long after that.”

FULL story and video at link.