the autopsy “did not make it possible to determine the cause”, according to the prosecution

A preliminary investigation was opened after the complaint filed by the One Voice association, following the death of the orca. The animal rights association accuses the park of insufficient treatment towards Moana.

After the death of the orca Moana in the Marineland park in Antibes (Alpes-Maritimes) last October, the autopsy carried out does not yet allow us to “determine the cause of the animal’s death”according to a provisional pathology report sent to the Grasse public prosecutor’s office, which is leading the investigations.

The animal, a male then aged 12, was found dead on his stomach at the bottom of one of the pools at Marineland in Antibes on the morning of October 18, 2023. According to the provisional autopsy report, “macroscopic examination did not make it possible to determine the cause of the death of the animal. No underlying acute or chronic pathological process could be found to explain the death of the animal”.

No foreign body can explain the death of the animal either. Furthermore, the “nodules observed in the right lung and ulcer in the first gastric compartment” are, according to this same report, “chance findings, probably without significant clinical impact for the animal”. The results of microbiological and histological examinations are still awaited.

A petition to prevent the departure of orcas to Japan

A preliminary investigation was opened after the complaint filed by the One Voice association, following the death of the orca. The animal rights association accuses the park of insufficient treatment towards Moana, who died in her “Marineland chlorinated prison”.

A month before Moana’s death, in September, One Voice had obtained from the courts that an independent expertise be carried out on the state of Moana and another orca, Inouk, and on the state of Marineland’s infrastructure. The orc died before it could be launched.

One Voice is now campaigning for the safety of the three other specimens in the park which are currently the subject of a proposed sale to a Japanese zoo. An online petition to prevent the departure of orcas to Japan gathered more than 45,000 signatures on Friday. In France, the law of November 30, 2021 which aims to combat animal abuse provides for a ban by 2026 on the keeping and reproduction of cetaceans in captivity.