Sunderland's Charlotte Crosby and baby Alba front PETA campaign against cruelty to marine mammals

Sunderland reality TV star Charlotte Crosby and her baby daughter Alba are backing a campaign against marine mammals being kept in 'abusement' parks.

The pair, who both appear in BBC Three series Charlotte in Sunderland, feature in an advert for animal campaign organisation PETA.

The photoshoot for the campaign will feature in an upcoming episode of the show, which is in its second series.

PETA says female marine mammals are often forcibly impregnated and then separated from their beloved offspring, and the mother-and-baby shoot featuring Charlotte and Alba is designed to help hammer the message home that such acts are not acceptable.

In two accompanying videos, Charlotte, 33, who made her name on Geordie Shore, shares the story of 'abused mother' Morgan, an orca born in the wild who has been forced to perform tricks for the past 12 years.

Morgan was bred and gave birth to a daughter named Ula, who, as Crosby notes, died at just two years old after enduring what PETA calls "a short, miserable life of stress and confinement".

 “The story of Morgan and Ula shatters my heart as a mam,” said Charlotte, a former St Anthony's pupil.

“It’s actually devastating to even think about.”

In the video, she goes on to explain that, in addition to having no bodily autonomy and often being denied the chance to care for their young, animals held at marine parks endure lives of intense deprivation.

“Knowing what these animals go through … they have no freedom. They are deprived of everything,” she said.

“They are living in the most awful, awful circumstances and conditions. It’s just cruelty to animals. That is all it is.”

In the open ocean, orcas and other dolphins swim many miles a day alongside their families and communicate over vast distances by unique dialects of pulsed calls, whistles, and clicks that are passed down from generation to generation.

In marine parks, PETA says, they languish in pools filled with chemically treated water. They never have the opportunity to dive deep, feel the ocean currents, or choose what to eat.

“Never visit a marine park yourself,” Charlotte pleads with viewers. “And please, encourage all travel providers not to sell tickets to these parks.”

PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment” – opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org.uk or follow the group on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, or Instagram.