Lolita the orca will be released back into the Puget Sound within two years. Photo: Wikimedia Commons//CC BY-SA 3.0
In 1970, a Southern resident killer whale was captured in a cove off Seattle. Named Lolita, she was taken to the Miami Seaquarium and then kept in captivity for our entertainment for the next 53 years. But on March 30, after years of fighting, it was announced that Lolita will be returned to the waters from where she was taken. The news comes just a few weeks after Kiska, “the world’s loneliest whale,” died in a tank at MarineLand, a theme park in Niagara Falls, Canada.
As is generally the case with captive orcas, Lolita’s story is heartbreaking when one considers that orca whales are intelligent creatures with highly evolved social systems. Lolita was a member of a pod of orcas called the L Pod, which spends time in and around Penn Cove, Puget Sound, Washington. She was four years old when she was taken. Then she was sold to the Miami Seaquarium for something in the neighborhood of $20,000.
She had a tank-mate, a male orca named Hugo, who had been captured two years prior from the Puget Sound. For the next decade, until around about 1980, Lolita and Hugo lived in an 80-by-35-foot tank that was 20 feet deep. They jumped through hoops and allowed themselves to be ridden like surfboards. Although Hugo and Lolita did mate, they were never able to produce any calves — which, considering the fact that the calves would have been born into a life of captivity, perhaps isn’t the worst thing in the world — and Hugo eventually died in 1980. According to reports, his death was caused by a brain aneurysm from “repeatedly ramming his head into the side of the tank.” In the following years, Lolita shared her tank with short-beaked common dolphin and a pilot whale before living with a pair of pacific white-sided dolphins.
In early March of 2022, Lolita was effectively given her gold watch and retired from shows. And then, an announcement that was met with much applause from activists: The Miami Seaquarium reached a binding agreement with a nonprofit called Friends of Lolita to return her to an ocean habitat in the Pacific Northwest within two years. It was after the Miami Seaquarium was purchased by The Dolphin Company in recent years that the wheels of Lolita’s freedom began to spin.
“It has always been our commitment at The Dolphin Company that we place the highest priority on the well-being of animals, above all else,” said Eduardo Albor, CEO of The Dolphin Company. “Finding a better future for Lolita is one of the reasons that motivated us to acquire the Miami Seaquarium.”
Returning a whale to the ocean after half a century in captivity isn’t a simple thing, however. While it might be nice to think that we could just take Lolita in a sling and drop her off somewhere in the sea, that’s not the case. In the wild, orcas spend years at the mother’s side learning to hunt. They form complex relationships with their pod, and when a whale is either born in captivity or taken early, it never has the chance to learn what it takes to survive in the wild. But Lolita’s rescuers have a plan.
“We are working toward and hope the relocation will be possible in the next 18 to 24 months,” a press release reads. “At present, Lolita receives round-the-clock care by a team of dedicated, highly-skilled, medical, nutrition and behavior experts. Her most recent independent health and welfare assessment completed by Dr. Tom Reidarson, DVM DACZM, Dr. James McBain, DVM retired and Dr. Stephanie Norman, DVM, Ph-D indicated that her energy, appetite and engagement in daily activities is becoming reasonably stable.”
When she is released, it won’t be into the open ocean. Instead, it will likely be into an ocean habitat in the Salish Sea. With luck, she’ll thrive, but there is at least one depressing precedent. In 2002, a whale named Keiko was reintroduced to Icelandic waters after being rehabilitated for life in the wild. Just a year later, he was found dead in a bay in Norway.
Hopefully, though, Lolita’s life in her new ocean habitat will be long and fruitful.
