SeaWorld Sinks Into War Of Words With PETA

(RTTNews) - SeaWorld Entertainment Inc. (SEAS) has accused animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals or PETA of trying to disrupt its 'AskSeaWorld' Twitter campaign by flooding the social media with repeated questions and troll accounts.

Orlando, Florida-based SeaWorld launched the new advertising campaign last week to deal with declining attendance and revenues that were affected after a documentary severely criticized SeaWorld's treatment of killer whales.

SeaWorld said it launched the new effort "to cut through the misinformation out there" by taking questions from Twitter and answering them on its website AskSeaWorld.com. The company said its vets, trainers and other animal care professionals will participate in answering questions from the public.

However, SeaWorld accused animal rights activists, led most notably by PETA, of sending spam messages to Twitter.

SeaWorld said in a blog post, "It's no surprise that animal rights activists, led most notably by PETA, have inundated Twitter to try to deny people with real questions a chance to have their questions answered. A full 70 percent of the questions thus far have come from PETA and other animal rights groups or bots."

SeaWorld accused PETA and other animal rights group of trying to drown out thoughtful and honest answers by flooding social media with repeated questions and troll accounts.

According to the company, the hashtag #answertheQ is a page set up to allow animal rights activists the ability to spam messages to Twitter.

However, SeaWorld said it would continue to provide answers to honest questions - even from those who might not support the company.

The criticism on SeaWorld started with the critical 2013 documentary 'Blackfish,' which was about Tilikum, a captive killer whale who was involved in the deaths of three individuals. The documentary also noted the lower life spans of captive killer whales and their increased aggression during the captivity.

The film severely affected the aquatic amusement park's attendance and revenues. For the fourth quarter 2014, attendance dropped to 4.4 million visitors from 4.5 million a year earlier.

CEO Jim Atchison had to resign from the company and its stock plunged about 44 percent last year. Earlier in March, SeaWorld appointed Joel Manby as CEO.