Lolita: Fame and Misfortune
Important Update
On March 23rd, 2022, the Mayor of Miami-Dade County held a press conference to announce an agreement whereby the new owners of the Miami Seaquarium – The Dolphin Company – will be providing access to Lolita for a team of independent veterinarians and other experts to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of her physical and mental health. The Whale Sanctuary Project will be providing our best resources to this work.
For more details and to view the press conference, please see this blog post.
Before she knew life under a blistering sun at a Miami theme park, the orca known as Lolita swam with her family off the coast of Washington State. Today, she is the most famous orca living in captivity.
In 1970, when she was just four years old, she was captured from her family, the “L”-pod, from the Salish Sea off the coast of Seattle in the Pacific Northwest and sold to the Miami Seaquarium for about $20,000.
Since that time, the Lummi Nation of the Pacific Northwest have continued to press for her return. To the Lummi, she is Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut, a member of Sk’aliCh’elh family of orcas who call the Salish Sea home.
To the Seaquarium, Lolita represents a star money-making attraction despite years of protests by the Lummi and by other activists and animal experts who cite evidence that her living situation is legally and ethically unacceptable.
For people who object to the exploitation of intelligent animals for human entertainment, her situation represents a perfect storm of what’s wrong with keeping orcas in captivity. Indeed, few individuals have inspired people to care about and create change for captive cetaceans as has Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut.
A plan for a better future
As part of our Whale Aid work, the Whale Sanctuary Project has drafted a comprehensive operational plan, grounded in and guided by Lummi ancestral wisdom as well as science, to safely bring Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut back to her Xwlemi Tokw (her home) in the Salish Sea. The Xwlemi Tokw will be a secure and protected area within the Salish Sea where Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut can thrive in her natal waters while receiving ongoing human care.
This operational plan was created in consultation with leading experts in marine mammal veterinary medicine, rehabilitation and husbandry, the lives and culture of the Southern Resident orcas of the Pacific Northwest, and the Salish Sea ecosystem. It addresses how to responsibly proceed with all components of Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s return to her custom-built Xwlemi Tokw in the Salish Sea, while always prioritizing her wellbeing and the wellbeing of the Salish Sea ecosystem and all its inhabitants, including the Southern Resident orcas.
You can read more about the plan here.
Photo by Drones for Animal Defense
Lolita’s family being rounded up for capture
Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut currently resides in the smallest orca tank in the United States. It measures just 80 feet long, 60 feet wide, and a shallow 20 feet deep. Experts note that her tank is so small that it violates the standards of the Animal Welfare Act, legislation that outlines the bare minimum of acceptable standards of care for animals held for exhibition and research.
When she first came to the Seaquarium, Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut lived alongside Hugo, another orca captured from the same region, who had been captured two years earlier. They lived together for about 10 years until Hugo, after years of slamming his head against the sides of the tank and breaking his rostrum, died of a brain aneurysm in 1980.
Since Hugo’s death, Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut has lived without the company of any other orca, a lonely life for a member of a family-oriented, social species.
Of all the whales seized during the infamous roundups of Southern Resident orcas half a century ago, Lolita is the only one still alive.
Would Lolita Remember Her Family?
In 1996, biologist Ken Balcomb of the Center for Whale Research recorded Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut’s family greeting each other around the San Juan Islands, and reporters for NBC TV’s Dateline played the recording to her at the Miami Seaquarium. She appeared to recognize the calls:
Other challenges
When Hurricane Irma devastated the Miami coast in the September of 2017, Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut was left abandoned in her tank, exposed to the treacherous elements, flying debris and potential power outages that could cause her tank to overheat and the filtration system to fail.
Lolita abandoned during Hurricane Irma, by FreeLolita
In June 2021, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) conducted a special inspection of the Miami Seaquarium. The report begins with the assertion that the Seaquarium’s management had been deliberately ignoring the recommendations of its inhouse veterinarian. The veterinarian later spoke with the Miami Herald about the challenges that Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut faced at the Seaquarium. (Read more about this report here.)
How many more months or years must Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut endure the cramped, tiny quarters of her tank that continuously put her health and safety at risk?
As animal advocates and Seaquarium officials continue to fight to determine her future, she continues to circle her tiny pool, still performing regularly for a paying public. She lives without the company of others of her kind.
At the Whale Sanctuary Project, we want Lolita to represent neither the promise of profit nor the ills of captivity. We want her to have the space and resources to be herself for the first time since she was four years old and only knew the protection and nurturance of her family – a family that still swims the waters of the Pacific Northwest where she was born.