She has been performing at the Miami Seaquarium in Florida for 53 years. She is the one who has attracted millions of viewers over several generations. Lolita, also called Tokitae, is a female orca who has lived there since the park bought her from her captors in September 1970 and she has just obtained the right to return to her native ocean. This is what the management of the park has just announced.
After years of conflict, an amicable solution was found between the owners of the park, the county of Miami and associations such as the NGO Friends of Lolita for “to make possible“is the expression used, the liberation of the orca.
For what ” possible“? Because the objective is to release it where it was captured 53 years ago, that is to say not in the Atlantic which borders Miami, but in the Pacific Ocean, from the other side of the United States, 4,400 kilometers from its basin in Florida. To transport it, it will be necessary to charter a cargo plane, either a Boeing 747 or a military plane. It will require special transport trucks at the start and on arrival, and it will also be necessary to build a gigantic enclosure offshore in which it will evolve before being able to return definitively to the wild life.
A $20 million release
After more than 50 years spent in captivity, Lolita must relearn how to hunt, find her food, and especially communicate with the other members of the local group of killer whales, the one from which she was snatched in 1970 and which, since then, has not moved. The small band is still in the Salish Sea, they are called resident killer whales, killer whales among which is still the mother of Lolita, a 90-year-old animal. That’s why it’s this place and not another that was chosen to put it back in the water. The operation will take a year and a half to two years and will cost between 15 and 20 million dollars, a sum that a generous donor, the owner of the baseball team of the Colts, Jim Irsay, agrees to pay in full. .
Summed up like this, the operation looks simple. However, the park had to find itself at the foot of the wall to accept.
Lolita had to fall ill, her skin gangrene with fungi, a veterinarian had to declare her unfit to perform her somersaults and the management ended up with an invalid 3.5-ton killer whale and therefore far too expensive to keep so that this plan can finally be put in place. At 57, Lolita will be able to find the open sea. And try to reacclimatize. Should we wait until the animals are in this state to release them?