Lolita the Orca died on Friday. Slated for release in the coming months, she didn’t live to see the ocean again. Photo: Miami Seaquarium
Lolita, the orca who spent a half a century in a tiny tank performing tricks for us, died on Friday. Tragically, her death came less than six months after a plan was announced to release her back in to the ocean to live out her final days where she should have been the whole time.
Lolita, originally named Tokitae or Toki, was captured around the age of four from a cove near Seattle, Washington. She was taken to the Miami Seaquarium to live a life devoted to our entertainment. It’s a sad story which can be read mostly in full here.
Lolita was a Southern resident killer whale. Orcas are highly intelligent and very social, so cramming her — or any other orca, for that matter — into a tiny tank with only a few partners over the years to stave off the boredom, is exceptionally cruel. Before she was taken, her family was known as the “L Pod,” which spends most of its time in and around Penn Cove, in Puget Sound, Washington. The Miami Seaquarium bought her life for around $20,000.
For a while, she had a tank mate named Hugo. He was captured from the same cove, about two years before Lolita. They lived together for a decade in a tank that measured 80-by-35-feet and only 20 feet deep. Hugo died in 1980 after “repeatedly ramming his head into the side of the tank.” Over the next few years, Lolita shared her cell with a short-beaked common dolphin and a pilot whale before living with a pair of Pacific white-sided dolphins.
As is the case more and more frequently these days, there was a loud outcry from the public to release her. It’s a complicated thing, though, releasing captive orcas who have been away from the ocean for so long. Simply dropping them back in the sea and letting them go their own way is generally just a path to a quick death. Captive orcas haven’t had a chance to learn how to survive in the wild, and are more susceptible to disease. But 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. The plan was to relocate sometime between October 2024 and April 2025, but Lolita didn’t live long enough to see that relocation.
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According to the Seaquarium, Lolita died on Friday afternoon from a suspected renal condition. In the days leading up to her death, the orca began exhibiting serious signs of discomfort. Miami Seaquarium staff began medical treatment immediately, but it was to no avail.
“Toki was an inspiration to all who had the fortune to hear her story and especially to the Lummi nation that considered her family,” the staff wrote on social media. “Those of us who have had the honor and privilege to spend time with her will forever remember her beautiful spirit.”
The announcement was met with more than a few comments accusing the Seaquarium with animal cruelty.
“MIAMI SEAQUARIUM HAS BLOOD ON ITS HANDS,” wrote one user on Instagram.
PETA, the outspoken animal rights organization, released a statement addressing Lolita’s passing.
“She died as she had lived: After spending more than five decades imprisoned by the Miami Seaquarium in the smallest, bleakest orca tank in the world, deprived of any semblance of a natural life, the long-suffering orca Lolita has passed away,” PETA wrote in the statement. “Kind people begged the Miami Seaquarium to end Lolita’s hellish life in a concrete cell and release her to a seaside sanctuary, where she could dive deep, feel the ocean’s currents, and even be reunited with the orca believed to be her mother, but plans to make this move came too late, and Lolita was denied even a minute of freedom from her grinding 53 years in captivity.”
