In the wake of the killer whale catastrophe, intrepid soul Jack Hanna is prepared to go to the aquamat for that orca. On Larry King, Hanna vehemently fought the president of PETA to come to the whale's—and Seaworld's—defense.

Hanna compares this Shamu incident to astronauts dying in space; if they are blasted into orbit, then die, would we then stop blasting other astronauts into space? Probably! But if we blasted astronauts into space to train astrowhales, and those astrowhales devoured our astronauts, would we still astrotrain them? I guess so? I don't know. Anyway, PETA's president Ingrid Newkirk is obviously outraged by the fact that Seaworld even exists. She believes it should be closed altogether, because training killer whales for our entertainment is the equivalent of torturing newborn babies and all of that PETA jargon.

But the most interesting part of the clip comes when Hanna says that if the trainer were alive today (even though she isn't), she would do it all again—even if it meant dying. Call it a hunch, but if this trainer knew she would die at the mouth of a whale, I doubt she would want to work with that whale—even if it meant educating children. Books can do that. Books don't eat people...yet.

Hanna also appeared on The Early Show yesterday, once again defending the whale, saying that no matter how many deaths occur, keeping animals in captivity for our education and entertainment is invaluable.