A Family in Distress

Update, March 28, 2024: We have heard this morning that Inouk has died in his tank at Marineland Antibes. Our hearts and thoughts go out to his sister Wikie and to his nephew Keijo. They are, once again, a family in ever-deeper distress.

In 2020, the French Minister of Ecology, Barbara Pompili, announced her decision to bring an end, over the next 10 years, to keeping whales in concrete tanks at entertainment parks.

At that time, there were four orcas still on display in France. One of them, Moana, died in 2023, leaving Wikie, Inouk and Keijo. Wikie and Inouk are sister and brother; Keijo is Wikie’s son, as was Moana. All of them have spent their lives in concrete tanks at Marineland Antibes (not related to Marineland Ontario).

The family’s life and unnatural relationships in captivity are disturbing.

Inouk was born in February 1999. His mother, Sharkane, and father, Kim 2, had been captured in Icelandic waters. Shortly after his fourth birthday, Inouk’s older sister, Shouka, was transferred to SeaWorld. His parents died soon afterwards.

Inouk has ground his teeth to the pulp biting the edges of the tanks. Experts explain that this makes his mouth painful and causes gum ulcers, frequent throat infections, yeast infections on his tongue, and acid reflux. His dorsal fin shows traces of bites and is weak on the right side.

Wikie is Inouk’s younger sister. Born in June 2001, she was held for the first 18 months of her life in a tank separate from her mother, Sharkane, who was very disturbed and unable to give Wikie the care she needed. In the ocean, young orcas always have their mother, aunts and other close family members close by to support them and are never left on their own. But without that support and upbringing, Wikie was left emotionally scarred.

Wikie gave birth to a son, Moana, but being too young and lacking the parenting skills she would have learned in the wild, she had difficulty relating to her calf.

When she was only 10 years old, Wikie was artificially inseminated from Ulises, an orca who had been captured and placed in isolation at the Barcelona Zoo before being sent to SeaWorld San Diego in the United States. In early 2011, Wikie gave birth to a son, Moana, who was the first orca in Europe, to have been born as a result of artificial insemination.

Wikie was too young to be rearing a calf. And because of her young age and the absence of experienced family members, Wikie had no role models to follow and was unable to fully bond with Moana.

For his part, Moana was highly intelligent and learned at a young age to do the kinds of tricks that usually require years of training. Unable to learn from his mother, he learned to do tricks and the like from his trainers and was good at doing what humans expected him to do, as commanded. But his initial enthusiasm soon gave way to boredom in the confines of a concrete tank.

Meanwhile, and all too soon after the birth of Moana, Wikie had found herself pregnant once again. In the wild, orcas space out their pregnancies over many years to give themselves a chance to properly raise their children. Worse yet, Wikie had been made pregnant this time by her half-brother Valentin. Such inbreeding is unheard of in the wild. In November 2013, she gave birth to Keijo, and once again Wikie was unable to bond with her newborn.

Two years later, Valentin died when polluted water from a storm flowed into his tank. And Wikie became even more disturbed. But Keijo took solace in training, showing real passion for learning tricks. However, as the years went by, his need for stimulation was no longer being met. His snout is damaged.

Video courtesy of OneVoice. The images have not been edited.

Looking to the future

The story of this unfortunate family is typical of what happens at amusement parks around the world as mothers and calves are separated and parks sell their whales to other facilities to fill vacancies or loan them out for breeding.

The three living orcas at Marineland Antibes –Wikie, Inouk and Keijo – were all born in captivity and cannot be released into the open ocean where they would not have the skills needed to survive. They are a family unit/pod. All they have left is each other, and it would be adding further cruelty to their suffering for them to be separated.

In response to the new French ruling, there have been reports that Marineland Antibes has been planning to send Wikie and her surviving family to an entertainment park in Japan. The animal protection organization One Voice is working together with other animal protection organizations in France to give these three whales a peaceful new life free from abuse and exploitation. And the Whale Sanctuary Project has informed One Voice and the French government that we would welcome the opportunity to work with Marineland Antibes to bring all three whales to the sanctuary we are creating in Nova Scotia.

Biographical information in this post courtesy of OneVoice. And photo of Marineland Antibes copyright Nikola Krtolica.