A few months back I watched the sad and powerful film Blackfish on CNN.

The film focuses mainly on Tilikum, a killer whale that has killed a few people while in captivity at SeaWorld. It also shows the awful, cramped conditions killers whales are forced to live in. Find out more about Blackfish here.

Based on the film, I would probably not go to SeaWorld in the future.

I first thought about Southwest’s relationship with SeaWorld while flying to Dallas. I saw one of their specialty fleet (I think it was Arizone One) take off and it reminded me of a post that I wrote over the summer. Check it out here.

Blackfish has caused some trouble for SeaWorld by letting the world know what has been going on at the park. There are also a variety of petitions against SeaWorld on Change.org includng this one (which has 90,000 votes) to release Tilikum to a seapen for rehab.

According to Buzzfeed, due to the Blackfish controversy musical acts like Heart, Barenaked Ladies and Willie Nelson have cancelled SeaWorld shows. I read a little more into this and found that others have cancelled too like Martina McBride, Trisha Yearwood & Cheap Trick.

I looked to see if any of SeaWorlds sponsors have bailed on them due to Blackfish and couldn’t find much information.

I didn’t think much of Southwest and SeaWorld again until yesterday. I saw a post on Southwest’s blog which was pretty interesting.

The post’s title definitely caught my attention:

• Update on SeaWorld Partnership:

According to the post, Southwest is listening to concerns by customers related to SeaWorld. They have a longstanding relationship with SeaWorld that is based on travel and bringing families together. Southwest is talking with SeaWorld about recent concerns being raised.

Southwest will continue its partnership with SeaWorld.

What do you think about Southwest’s partnership with SeaWorld? Should they continue it or re-evaluate the situation due to abuses shown in Blackfish?

Check out the full Southwest blog post here.