Lolita (orca)

Lolita was member of L Pod of the southern resident orcas, an endangered orca community that lives in the northeast Pacific Ocean. She was a close relative of L25 "Ocean Sun", who is the oldest member of the pod. After Lolita's death, L25 "is the only living whale from the 1960s and 1970s capture era." Miami Seaquarium veterinarian Jesse White purchased Lolita for about $20,000. The young orca was initially called "Tokitae", which in Chinook Jargon means "Bright day, pretty colors". However, given the age difference between the young female and Hugo, she was renamed Lolita after the heroine in Vladimir Nabokov's novel. The Lummi Nation of Washington refers to her as ''Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut, or, a female orca from an ancestral site in the Penn Cove area of the Salish Sea bioregion. They view her as a member of their "qwe 'lhol mechen''", which translates to 'our relative under the water', according to former tribal chairman Jeremiah "Jay" Julius. known as the "Whale Bowl", a tank by deep. The pair mated many times (once to the point of suspending shows) but they never produced any offspring. Hugo appeared to suffer from a form of psychosis endemic in captive whales, and often rammed his head against the tank walls; he died in 1980 at 15 years old Lolita then shared the tank with a short-beaked common dolphin and a pilot whale during the 1980s and 1990s, In 2017, "the Miami Beach Commission voted unanimously for a symbolic resolution" to return Lolita to the place of her capture. The Dolphin Company announced that they would allow third-party veterinarians to examine Lolita. Planned return to natal waters On March 30, 2023, the Miami Seaquarium and its new owner, The Dolphin Company, announced a legally binding agreement with the Friends of Toki (formerly Friends of Lolita) non-profit organization to move her to an ocean sanctuary in the San Juan Islands After being fed by humans for decades, it was questionable whether she could sustain a wild hunting lifestyle, according to scientific opinion. cautioned against unreasonable expectations for a release back into the wild after decades in captivity. Colby said that having her live out her remaining days in a sea pen in 'home waters' would be successful enough. "I fear that when people see that she's being brought home, people will imagine it's just going to be a sort of Free Willy moment where she swims over and connects with her family. I can't imagine that happening," he said. Motivated by his daughter, the CEO of The Dolphin Company, Eduardo Albor, said, "More than just moving Lolita to a place where she will be better, she will become a symbol for us and the future generations." The decision was made in cooperation with Miami-Dade County, and Indianapolis Colts owner and philanthropist Jim Irsay. The plan included acclimating and transporting Li'i and Loke, two Pacific white-sided dolphins who are her companions, with Lolita to the Salish Sea. Li'i remained with Lolita during the process, while Loke was instead transferred with her offspring Elelo to Shedd Aquarium in August 2023. When Lolita would have been moved, the transportation method would have been similar to the one used to move her to Miami in 1970. She was being trained to swim into a custom–made stretcher that a crane would lift into a container filled with ice water. The container would then have gone onto a plane to Bellingham, Washington, from where it would be loaded onto a barge to transport her over water to a sea pen at a private location for the rest of her life. She would have continued to "receive round-the-clock medical care, security and feedings." In the Friends of Toki plan, "Trainers and veterinarians would tend and feed Lolita from floating platforms and boats, and a 24-hour security along a wider netted perimeter would keep boats away." The process of moving all three animals was expected to take between 18 and 24 months and cost an estimated $15–20 million, the majority of which would have been bankrolled by Irsay. Lead veterinarian Tom Reidarson said she "nearly died of pneumonia" in October 2022. The monthly veterinary report of July 31, 2023, assessed that the pulmonary lesion was smaller. Bloodwork and chuff (blowhole exhalation samples) were unremarkable, with a very low white blood cell count in Lolita's chuff samples. In summary, the veterinarians were seeing incremental improvements in her health. Nonetheless, she was still fighting the chronic infection in her lung, and continued to receive daily Faropenem and antifungal medications. These include an ozone generator to replace chlorine. "New chillers can now get the temp down to mimic the waters of the Pacific Northwest, said trainer Michael Partica." With very high temperatures in the Biscayne Bay source water, the two large portable chiller units enabled Lolita's pool temperature "to remain in the upper 50s [around 14°C], despite air and source water temperatures hovering in the upper 90s [around 37°C]. Round-the-clock maintenance of life support and water quality is being well managed by staff," the independent vets reported. ==Death==

On August 18, 2023, Miami Seaquarium announced on their Facebook and Instagram that Lolita had died, apparently due to renal failure. They indicated that her health had been declining rapidly over the previous two days, and despite veterinarians' best efforts, she died that same afternoon. Later in the month, the Miami Seaquarium confirmed that, after the necropsy, Lolita's remains would be cremated and returned to her natal area, the Pacific Northwest. On September 23, 2023, Lolita's remains were scattered off the coast of the Lummi Stommish Grounds in a traditional burial ceremony by members of the Lummi nation. On September 25, 2023, Miami Seaquarium announced that Li'i, the remaining 40-year-old male Pacific white-sided dolphin who was expected to be moved with Lolita, was relocated to SeaWorld San Antonio and reunited with family members and other Pacific white-sided dolphins to avoid remaining in solitary following Lolita's death. Necropsy On August 29, the Miami Seaquarium released a statement regarding the necropsy process, which began with an examination on August 19. Analyses "could take more than four weeks." The necropsy was done in compliance with USDA and NOAA regulations, a spokesperson for the Seaquarium noted. "More than 15 veterinarians were reportedly assigned to the necropsy." "The August 19th examination took about 10 hours, according to the August 29th release, with samples taken to different labs for independent review." On October 17, the Miami Seaquarium released a statement that according to the necropsy report the orca's cause of death was due to a "progression of multiple chronic conditions including renal disease and pneumonia". Reactions to death Following her death, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk released a statement, saying "Lolita was denied even a minute of freedom from her grinding 53 years in captivity", urged "families to honor Lolita's memory by never visiting marine parks", and called for more marine parks to release dolphins into sea sanctuaries. Save Lolita, a group that had campaigned for the orca's release, stated that Lolita "will forever remind us of the urgent need to protect our oceans and the magnificent creatures that call them home." World Animal Protection US's executive director Lindsay Oliver released a statement, saying "She deserved the freedom of the open sea, not a life confined to a small tank. It's time for this industry to end, so no more animals have to suffer like this. Swim free, Tokitae." After Lolita's death, Ted Griffin, the man who captured her from Puget Sound, said he had "no regrets" about capturing orcas, except those who died from being dropped by slings, overheating during transport, or injured in captivity. ==Activism and governmental actions==

Animal rights groups and anti-captivity activists asserted that Lolita was being subjected to cruelty. in which many anti-captivity activists, most notably Ric O'Barry (former Flipper dolphin trainer), argued against the conditions of her captivity and expressed a hope that she might be re-introduced to the wild. O'Barry had trained and performed with the orca Hugo at the Miami Seaquarium. Urged by Orca Network, in 2012, the Washington state government, which was sympathetic to the cause of returning her to her natal waters, named a new Washington state ferry under construction the after Lolita's earlier name. The name also maintained the Washington tradition of naming ferries with regional tribal words. The vessel runs between Clinton and Mukilteo, north of Seattle, across a passage where Lolita and her community were chased during her capture. On January 17, 2015, thousands of protesters from all over the world gathered outside the Miami Seaquarium to demand Lolita's release and asked other supporters worldwide to tweet "#FreeLolita" on Twitter. In 2018 the Lummi Nation traveled to the Seaquarium with a totem pole carved for (their name for Lolita), sang to her, and prayed that she would be returned to the Salish Sea. According to journalist Lynda Mapes, "The Seaquarium would not allow tribal members any closer than the public sidewalk outside the facility where the whale performs twice a day for food." In response, environmental scholars and Julius argued that such statements are representative of a troubling pattern of discounting Native American knowledge and relationships, theft, and possession, which are "part and parcel of the possessive nature of settler colonialism." On September 24, 2020, the 50th anniversary of Lolita's arrival at the Seaquarium, tribal members of the Lummi Nation, joined by the local Seminole, traveled to Miami again, held a ceremony in support of , and demanded she be released to her native waters. Some, such as the director of the University of British Columbia's Marine Mammal Research Unit, Andrew Trites, argued that Lolita was too old for life in the wild and that reintroducing her to the ocean after over fifty years in captivity would be "unethical" and a "death sentence". However, other environmental scholars have posited that such arguments are representative of colonial conservation policies, stating that "The whales were killed and captured one at a time by settlers. If they can be killed or captured one at a time, there is no reason why the whales cannot be helped one at a time. Individual whales and pods can be cared for. 'Lolita' can be returned to her home waters." Legal cases In November 2011, the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), PETA, and three individuals filed a lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to end the exclusion of Lolita from the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of the Pacific Northwest's southern resident orcas. NMFS reviewed ALDF's joint petition and the thousands of comments submitted by the public and found the petition merited. In February 2015, the NOAA announced it would issue a rule to include Lolita under the protection of the Endangered Species Act. Previous to this, although the orca population that she was taken from is listed as endangered, as a captive animal, Lolita was exempted from this classification. This change did not impact her captivity. On March 18, 2014, a judge dismissed ALDF's case challenging Miami Seaquarium's Animal Welfare Act license to display captive orcas. In June 2014, ALDF filed a notice of appeal of the District Court decision that found the USDA had not violated the law when it renewed Miami Seaquarium's AWA exhibitor license. Cultural presence Portions of Jennine Capó Crucet's novel Say Hello to My Little Friend, both about and set in the city of Miami, are narrated from the perspective of Lolita. The orca died while the book was in preparation and Capó Crucet, whose research led her to believe that orcas may be more intelligent than humans, hopes the novel will call attention to "the plight of captive marine mammals everywhere" and serve as a memorial to Lolita. ==See also==