Lolita: Fame and Misfortune

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, a possession so prized that officials maintain their grip on her 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.

Photo by Drones for Animal Defense

Lolita’s family being rounded up for capture

She 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, Lolita lived alongside Hugo, another orca captured from the same region, who had been captured two years earlier. Lolita and Hugo 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, Lolita 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:

Lolita abandoned during Hurricane Irma, by FreeLolita

When Hurricane Irma devastated the Miami coast in the September of 2017, Miami Seaquarium abandoned Lolita in her tiny tank, totally exposed to the treacherous elements. According to former SeaWorld trainer Samantha Berg, Lolita’s exposure during Irma placed the imprisoned orca in considerable danger:

“Her tank is not deep enough for her to submerge and find refuge from flying debris. And, in an ironic turn of events, she even faces the potential of drowning if the surface of her tank becomes sufficiently blocked by falling detritus. Or maybe the filtration system will fail, and she’ll have to spend days or weeks floating around in her own excrement. Her tank may overheat if the power goes out and this could easily lead to a slower death from disease and injury.”

How many more months or years must Lolita endure the cramped, tiny quarters of her tank quarters that continuously put her health and safety at risk?

As animal advocates and Seaquarium officials continue to fight to determine her future, Lolita continues to circle her tiny pool. She performs regularly for a paying public. She lives without the company of fellow killer whales.

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.