Entrance to SeaWorld San Diego
Visitors enter SeaWorld San Diego. REUTERS/Mike Blake

PETA has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, calling on the agency to investigate SeaWorld San Diego after an incident that apparently took place Friday.

The animal activist group, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, is accusing the park of federal Animal Welfare Act violations over housing incompatible animals together. The filing came about, the organization said, after a park-goer sent in video of a clash among orcas Friday morning at the attraction.

The SeaWorld visitor told the organization that blood could be seen in the water and that bites and other injuries were visible on the orcas that was under attack.

The accusation followed the Thursday death of Nakai, an orca at SeaWorld San Diego. Nakai, born at the park in 2001, died of an infection, officials said.

“PETA is calling on the USDA to investigate SeaWorld for holding animals in conditions so stressful they would lead to horrific attacks and reminds families to stay away from any park that imprisons orcas or other animals,” said the organization’s Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman.

PETA also noted that Nakai was involved in a similar incident in 2012, when he was kept in small concrete tank with “incompatible orcas” and sustained puncture marks and jaw injuries.

SeaWorld later issued a statement calling the video and conclusions drawn from it by PETA “misleading.”

“The video released by PETA is misleading and mischaracterized. In fact, it shows common orca behaviors exhibited by both wild populations and those in human care as part of natural social interactions,” SeaWorld said. “During the interaction, one of the orcas sustained some minor and superficial abrasions that pose no serious health risk.”

“Numerous scientific papers have been published about these behaviors among wild orcas. The papers include documented physical evidence in orcas that resulted from these same types of interactions in the open ocean,” according to the statement.