Lolita (born ), formerly known as ''Tokitae'', is a female

orca The orca or killer whale (''Orcinus orca'') is a toothed whale belonging to the oceanic dolphin family, of which it is the largest member. It is the only Extant taxon, extant species in the genus ''Orcinus'' and is recognizable by its black ...

from the L pod of Southern resident orcas. She has been in captivity at the

Miami Seaquarium The Miami Seaquarium is a oceanarium located on the island of Virginia Key in Biscayne Bay, Miami-Dade County, Florida located near downtown Miami. Founded in 1955, it is one of the oldest oceanariums in the United States. In addition to marin ...

in Florida since September 24, 1970. As of 2022, Lolita is the second oldest orca in captivity behind Corky at

SeaWorld San Diego SeaWorld San Diego is an animal theme park, oceanarium, outside aquarium and marine mammal park, in San Diego, California, United States, inside Mission Bay Park. It is owned and operated by SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment. SeaWorld San Diego ...

. McKenna, Cara 2020

Life

Lolita is a member of the L Pod of southern resident orcas. She was captured from the wild on August 8, 1970 in

Penn Cove Whidbey Island (historical spellings Whidby, Whitbey, or Whitby) is the largest of the islands composing Island County, Washington, in the United States, and the largest island in Washington State. (The other large island is Camano Island, ...

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected ma ...

, Washington as part of the Penn Cove capture when she was approximately four years old. Lolita was one of seven young orcas sold to

oceanarium An oceanarium can be either a marine mammal park, such as Marineland of Canada, or a large-scale aquarium, such as the Lisbon Oceanarium, presenting an ocean habitat with marine animals, especially large ocean dwellers such as sharks. First ma ...

s and

marine mammal park A marine mammal park (also known as marine animal park and sometimes oceanarium) is a commercial theme park or aquarium where marine mammals such as dolphins, beluga whales and sea lions are kept within water tanks and displayed to the public in ...

s around the world from a capture of over eighty whales conducted by

Ted Griffin Ted Griffin (born December 21, 1970) is an American screenwriter whose credits include '' Ravenous'', ''Matchstick Men'', and ''Ocean's Eleven''. Born in Pasadena, California, Griffin graduated from Colgate University in 1993. He was schedule ...

and Don Goldsberry, partners in an operation known as ''Namu, Inc.'' Lolita is the second oldest known living Southern resident orca as of 2022 after L-25 "Ocean Sun", who is speculated to be Lolita's mother. Lolita was purchased by Miami Seaquarium veterinarian Dr. Jesse White for about $20,000. Upon arrival to the Seaquarium, Lolita joined a male southern resident orca named Hugo who was also captured from Puget Sound and had lived in the park two years before her arrival. She was originally called "Tokitae," which in the

Chinook language The Chinookan languages were a small family of languages spoken in Oregon and Washington along the Columbia River by Chinook peoples. Although the last known native speaker of any Chinookan language died in 2012, the 2009-2013 American Community ...

means "Bright day, pretty colors". However, she was renamed Lolita after

the heroine ''The Heroine'' is an incomplete 1967 film, now lost, that was directed by Orson Welles. Jean-Pierre Berthomé and Frnancois Thomas, ''Orson Welles at Work'' (Phaidon, London, 2008) pp.231, 282-3 Plot The film was due to be a one-hour adaptation ...

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bo ...

's novel. The Lummi Nation of Washington refer to Lolita 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 Lummi tribal chairman Jeremiah "Jay" Julius. She and Hugo lived together for ten years in what was then 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 died on March 4, 1980, after a

brain aneurysm An intracranial aneurysm, also known as a brain aneurysm, is a cerebrovascular disorder in which weakness in the wall of a cerebral artery or vein causes a localized dilation or ballooning of the blood vessel. Aneurysms in the posterior circ ...

occurred from the whale repeatedly ramming his head into the side of the tank. Thereafter, Lolita then shared the tank with a

short-beaked common dolphin The common dolphin (''Delphinus delphis'') is the most abundant cetacean in the world, with a global population of about six million. Despite this fact and its vernacular name, the common dolphin is not thought of as the archetypal dolphin, with ...

and a

pilot whale Pilot whales are cetaceans belonging to the genus ''Globicephala''. The two extant species are the long-finned pilot whale (''G. melas'') and the short-finned pilot whale (''G. macrorhynchus''). The two are not readily distinguishable at sea, a ...

during the 1980s and 1990s, Klinkenberg, Marty 1989 and today lives with a pair of pacific white-sided dolphins. On March 4, 2022, the Miami Seaquarium announced Lolita will no longer be on public display or used for staged exhibition shows under a new license with the

United States Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the United States federal executive departments, federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, ...

(USDA).

Controversy

Animal rights groups This list of animal rights groups consists of groups in the animal rights movement. Such animal rights groups work towards their ideals, which include the viewpoint that animals should have equivalent rights to humans, such as not being "used" i ...

and anti-

captivity Captivity, or being held captive, is a state wherein humans or other animals are confined to a particular space and prevented from leaving or moving freely. An example in humans is imprisonment. Prisoners of war are usually held in captivity by a ...

activists assert that Lolita is being subjected to

cruelty Cruelty is the pleasure in inflicting suffering or inaction towards another's suffering when a clear remedy is readily available. Sadism can also be related to this form of action or concept. Cruel ways of inflicting suffering may involve viol ...

. In 2003, she was the subject of the documentary ''Lolita: Slave to Entertainment''. in which many anti-captivity activists, most notably

Ric O'Barry Richard "Ric" O'Barry (born Richard Barry O'Feldman; October 14, 1939) is an American animal rights activist and former animal trainer who was first recognized in the 1960s for capturing and training the five dolphins that were used in the TV se ...

(former '' Flipper'' dolphin trainer), argue against her current conditions and express a hope that she may be re-introduced to the wild. On January 17, 2015, thousands of protesters from all over the world gathered outside the Miami Seaquarium to demand for Lolita's release and asked other supporters worldwide to tweet "''#FreeLolita''" on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. In 2017, a USDA

audit An audit is an "independent examination of financial information of any entity, whether profit oriented or not, irrespective of its size or legal form when such an examination is conducted with a view to express an opinion thereon.” Auditing ...

found that Lolita's tank does not meet the legal size requirements per federal law. In 2018 the Lummi Nation traveled to Seaquarium with a totem pole carved for Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut, sang to her, and prayed that she would be returned to the Salish Sea Bioregion. 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." Seaquarium Curator Emeritus Robert Rose responded to the Lummi's journey, saying that the Lummi Nation "should be ashamed of themselves, they don't care about Lolita, they don't care about her best interests, they don't really care whether she lives or dies. To them, she is nothing more than a vehicle by which they promote their name, their political agenda, to obtain money and to gain media attention. Shame on them." In response, environmental scholars and Julius have 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 The Lummi ( ; Lummi: ''Xwlemi'' ; also known as Lhaq'temish (), or ''People of the Sea''), governed by the Lummi Nation, are a Native American tribe of the Coast Salish ethnolinguistic group. They are based in the coastal area of the Pacific No ...

, joined by the local

Seminole The Seminole are a Native American people who developed in Florida in the 18th century. Today, they live in Oklahoma and Florida, and comprise three federally recognized tribes: the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, the Seminole Tribe of Florida, an ...

, travelled to Miami again, held a ceremony in support of Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut, and demanded she be released to her native waters. McKenna, Cara 2020 The totem pole journey is currently ongoing. Some, such as the director of the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

's Marine Mammal Research Unit, Andrew Trites, have argued that Lolita is 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

Animal Legal Defense Fund The Animal Legal Defense Fund is an animal law advocacy organization. Its stated mission is to protect the lives and advance the interests of animals through the legal system. It accomplishes this by filing high-impact lawsuits to protect ani ...

(ALDF),

PETA Peta or PETA may refer to: Acronym * Pembela Tanah Air, a militia established by the occupying Japanese in Indonesia in 1943 * People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, an American animal rights organization * People Eating Tasty Animals, an ...

, and three individuals filed a lawsuit against the

National Marine Fisheries Service The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), informally known as NOAA Fisheries, is a United States federal agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that is responsible for the stew ...

(NMFS) to end the exclusion of Lolita from the

Endangered Species Act The Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA or "The Act"; 16 U.S.C. § 1531 et seq.) is the primary law in the United States for protecting imperiled species. Designed to protect critically imperiled species from extinction as a "consequence of ec ...

(ESA) of the

Pacific Northwest The Pacific Northwest (sometimes Cascadia, or simply abbreviated as PNW) is a geographic region in western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though ...

's southern resident orcas. NMFS reviewed ALDF's joint petition, along with the thousands of comments submitted by the public and found the petition merited. In February 2015, the

NOAA The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (abbreviated as NOAA ) is an United States scientific and regulatory agency within the United States Department of Commerce that forecasts weather, monitors oceanic and atmospheric conditio ...

announced it would issue a rule to include Lolita in the endangered species list. 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 does not impact on 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 The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, and food. It aims to meet the needs of com ...

had not violated the law when it renewed Miami Seaquarium's AWA exhibitor license.

References

{{Reflist , refs= {{Cite web , url=http://www.miamiseaquarium.com/plan-a-visit/about-miami-seaquarium, title=About Miami Seaquarium , publisher=Miami Seaquarium , accessdate=19 May 2015 {{Cite web , url=http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/travel/2012903643_webwhale16.html , first=Robert , last=Samuels , title=Lolita still thrives at Miami Seaquarium , work=seattletimes.nwsource.com , publisher=Seattle Times , date=15 September 2010 , accessdate=9 August 2011 {{Cite web , url=http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local/Protesters-March-to-Free-Orca-Lolita-from-Miami-Seaquarium-288921671.html , first=Laura , last=Rodriguez , title=Protesters March to Free Orca Lolita from Miami Seaquarium , work=nbcmiami.com , publisher= NBC Miami , date=17 January 2015 , accessdate=17 January 2015

External links

*
Lolita: Slave to Entertainment
' film Individual orcas Southern resident orcas

Life

Controversy

Legal cases

See also

References

External links