Pamela Anderson marked her 52nd birthday by posing in a bath to raise awareness of orcas being kept in captivity at SeaWorld.
The new ad campaign for Peta (People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals) shows the former Baywatch star in a small bath, underneath the caption: “Could you live in a bathtub for 30 years?”
The poster also says: “Orcas at SeaWorld suffer for decades in cramped tanks comparable to bathtubs.
“Help Peta free them to seaside sanctuaries.”
Anderson – who has long been an advocate for animal welfare – also shared a letter she had penned to the CEO of SeaWorld Entertainment, Inc, asking that an orca named Corky be freed.
She wrote: “She’s always on my mind when my July 1 birthday approaches.
“She and I are the same age, but as a baby, she was torn away from her mother in the sea off British Columbia – right near where I grew up on Vancouver Island.
“I’m launching my new ad campaign for Peta in Corky’s honor.
“Please don’t let her die in a tank that, to her, is comparable to the size of a bathtub.”
The star said Corky’s 49 years in captivity had been “full of confusion, pain, and death”.
She said: “Kept almost constantly pregnant for a decade as part of a now-illegal captive-breeding program, she was inseminated seven times, six times by her own cousin, but none of her babies survived longer than 47 days.
“Her last baby was found floating at the bottom of her tank at SeaWorld.
“Corky’s brother and sister are still alive and flourishing in the wild, and a Canadian scientist who has been studying her family wants to bring her home.”
Anderson urged: “It’s within your power to release this long-suffering orca to a seaside sanctuary in a protected bay of her home waters.
“There, she could dive to new depths, relearn natural behavior, and even communicate with her brother and sister, who often visit the adjacent Blackfish Sound.
“She’d have a taste of freedom, instead of dying in a concrete tank at SeaWorld like so many orcas before her.”