The orca Lolita is dead: 53 years captive at the Miami Seaquarium

L’orca Lolita she died and the protests of the associations that for years had been asking for an open sea for her where she could live the last years of her life were of no use. The orca died of kidney problems after 53 years in captivity Miami Seaquarium, where she arrived in 1970 at the age of four caught swimming free in the waters off Washington state, and after 43 years of absolute solitude in the concrete tank where she performed daily for a paying audience. “Over the past couple of days, you’ve started to show severe signs of discomfort. Despite receiving the best medical care possible, she passed away on Friday afternoon.’ So she brought it back Facebook page of the American aquarium, emphasizing the profound sadness for its disappearance which, however, has not been enough, in these fifty years, to ensure that the orca has a different destiny.

The violent capture in 1970 and then a concrete pool for 53 years

A violent capture, that of Lolita, also accompanied by the death of five specimens of the herd with which the young orca swam free in the waters of Penn Covein the natural bay between Seattle and Vancouver. Together with the other captured specimens, even for Lolita from that August 1970 the doors of an aquarium were opened from which she would never come out. What it was intended for was a concrete swimming pool in a water park in Biscayne Bay in Miami where Lolita grew up, spending the first ten years of her life next to Hugo, a male specimen with which they tried to make her mate, but without results. Hugo, who in a short time began to give signs of impatience which soon turned into an absolute inability to bear captivity, he died for brain aneurysmafter hurling himself over and over against the edges of the tub in a terrible form of self harm. Thus the first associations in defense of Lolita arose: her goal was her return to freedom, but it was soon realized that Lolita could never return to the open sea, unable to feed herself independently.

Two federal reports said she had been abused for years

After two federal reports testifying that the Seaquarium had restricted the dolphins’ food by up to 60 percent for months to make them obedient during performances, and that in 2021 the facility failed to provide Lolita with sufficient shade, it reduced its hiring of food against veterinary instructions and forced her to perform in ways that likely resulted in injuries, the United States Department of Agriculture had decided not to allow the new owner of the Seaquarium, The Dolphin Company, to continue to publicly display Lolita for performances. It was, in fact, the first real opening to relocation to a seaside sanctuary in the Pacific Northwest, the same place where associations like Peta are calling for the dolphins still living at the Seaquarium to be relocated.

In March, the agreement to transfer it to a marine sanctuary

However, we had to wait for March of this year, however, for what seemed to be there definitive turning point. With a joint press conference, the Miami Seaquarium, managed by The Dolphin Company, announced the formal and binding agreement with Friends of Lolita to transfer it to a ocean sanctuary. The intervention of is fundamental Jim Irsayphilanthropist and owner of Indianapolis Colts, a professional American football team in the National Football League. Immediately, however, there was talk of a transfer that was not at all simple, starting with the weight of several tons of the orca and its health conditions. The hypothesis had been that of a period of 18-24 months, during which the orca would have had to be slowly re-accustomed to being self-sufficient, in order to organize a transfer by air and then the return to the waters, even if limited, of the marine sanctuary intended for her.

“Many have pleaded with the Miami Seaquarium to end Lolita’s hellish life in a concrete cell and release her to a seaside sanctuary where she could be dive deepfeel the ocean currents and even reunited with the orca believed to be his mother – commented Ingrid Newkirk the president of PETA to the news of her death – but it came too late and Lolita was denied even a minute of freedom in her 53 years of imprisonment».

Now all those who had waited with hope for Lolita to live her last years free, are asking that at least the dolphins who swam with her in the same pool be freed. And may Lolita be remembered as the last orca to die in captivity.