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Lolita: Bring our baby back
Lolita is the oldest living killer whale in captivity. As an infant, she was taken from her family, the Salish Sea's resident orca whales.

She's worked for Miami Seaquarium long enough and deserves to be retired to her home waters in the Pacific Northwest, USA. Orca Network has a comprehensive retirement plan for her in which Lolita would live out her life in a more natural, ocean setting -- instead of a undersized chlorine pool in Miami's harsh sun (#FreeLolita).

Read more about Orca Network's retirement plan at orcanetwork.org .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=832I0rGl5Ok

In 2015 following a petition submitted by PETA, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, and the Orca Network, the National Marine Fisheries Service finally reversed its decision and will protect Lolita as a member of an endangered species, which is an important first step in her rehabilitation and release from captivity. Now you need you to tell Miami Seaquarium's owner, Palace Entertainment, how important it is for Lolita to return to her natural habitat.

Go to peta.org/action/action-alerts/help-free-lolita for details.

Lolita's History

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In August 1970, in the waters of the Puget Sound of Washington State, a pod of killer whales were attacked and rounded up by a group of killer whale herders, led by Ted Griffiths and Don Goldsberry. Using speedboats and releasing explosives in the water, they forced the orcas into Penn Cove. Babies were separated from their mothers, as the infants were prime candidates to be sold to aquariums. The orca mothers would not leave their children and cried human-like screams in vain. One adult and four baby killer whales were killed during this capture. The herders, in an attempt to keep the orca deaths from the public, slit open the bellies of the dead animals, filled them with rocks, and sank the creatures with anchors, hoping they would never be discovered.

One of the orca infants captured was http://bestvideobabymonitor.co.uk/samsung-sew-3041-brilliantview/ 24, 1970, where she was renamed Lolita and has lived there ever since. She performs tricks during her scheduled shows, and has done so for the past forty-four years.

Lolitas tank that she calls home (at Miami Seaquarium) is dreadfully small, about the size of a hotel swimming pool.

It is now known that killer whales are incredibly intelligent, sentient creatures that in the wild are very social. Lolita, being a female, would still be living with her mother today. Resident killer whales from the Pacific Northwest, which Lolita is, stay with their mothers their entire lives. Lolita still vocalizes her pods calls. She currently lives alone in her tank with no other killer whale companions. When not performing in her show, Lolita floats listlessly in her tank, all by herself. In the wild, killer whales swim hundreds of miles a day, diving as deep as 500 feet. In her tank, she swims in circles inside the 35 foot wide area and can only go as deep as 20 feet, in a small area in the center of the tank.

Killer whales are incredibly sensitive to sound. In the wild, they avoid loud noises. They use a type of natural sonar called Echolocation, to navigate in the water and to locate objects. Living in a concrete pool is torture for an animal that uses this type of heightened sense, as their sound waves bounce off of the walls in the concrete tank, which is believed to cause stress to the animal. This is why no tank, no matter how big, is not the same as the open ocean and is considered a prison as far as the animal is concerned.

(Source: savelolita.org/her-story-2 )

Music and Photo Credits

Music: "Lost In Your", Lior, 2008

Photos: Todd Smith; Candice Emmons/NOAA Fisheries;Mike Charest; Wallie Funk/AP Photo; Ross Cobb; Bertrand; Felipe Oduardo Sierra Duperrin; ehpien; Bob Jensen

All used under Creative Commons licenses.





 
 
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