CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – This is a right or wrong story. And it involves Lolita – an Orca – a giant killer whale.
Lolita has been a performer at the Miami Seaquarium for the last 56 years. She is believed to be the oldest whale in captivity. And there’s been a fundraising effort to return her to the ocean to live out the rest of her days.
And enough money has been raised to make it happen. Lolita, at 8,000 pounds, will be airlifted from the Atlantic coast to her territorial waters in the Pacific Northwest, where a charity group runs an ocean sanctuary. She’ll swim in the ocean waters in a giant 3-mile tank to keep her safe. As she becomes more acclimated, her boundaries will be expanded, hopefully to the point where she can swim anywhere she wishes.
But there are risks. Lolita has to be transported while hanging from the bottom of a giant cargo plane. Lifting her up and placing her down is dangerous to both the animal and to humans. The flight itself is traumatic. Even though whales are very smart, there’s no way Lolita will be aware of what’s happening to her or why.
And it’s unknown if Lolita will thrive in her new home. She’s been fed by humans for decades; no one knows for sure if she’ll hunt for food on her own. Nor do we know how she’ll adjust to her new environment. Her tank in south Florida is warm. Lolita, a mammal – not a fish – knows nothing about the winters in the northwest.
In short, she might die.
If this sounds a little like Free Willy, there is an instructive story from that movie. The animal star of Free Willy was an Orca named Keiko, who belonged to a water park in Mexico. When they movie became popular, there was a fundraising effort to free Keiko into the wild. She was transported to the same whale sanctuary, and was eventually allowed to swim the ocean. But Keiko did not hunt for food, died in the wild after five years. She would have lived longer in her giant aquarium tank.
So is this a case of do-gooders run amuck? A tremendous amount of money has been raised – so much that the ‘Free Lolita’ advocates raised enough cash to buy the Miami Seaquarium in the name of giving away its star attraction.
I’m conflicted.
Yes, there is something romantic about seeing Lolita swim off to be free in the wild. And yet I would never have seen a killer whale, or a giraffe or a gorilla, or an elephant, if some of these species weren’t in captivity. In that sense, we are richer for animal ambassadors like Lolita the killer whale.
But what if she’s better off exactly where she is now?
Chris Conley
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