‘Unheard of’: The plan to bring Lolita the orca, captive for 50 years, back to Puget Sound
Global News
It is expected it will take 18 to 24 months to relocate Lolita, who is also known as Tokitae or Toki, from the Miami facility back to the northwestern coast of the U.S.
Lolita the orca, the second-oldest orca in captivity, is set to be returned to her home waters of Puget Sound.
As a four-year-old calf, she was captured and has spent 53 years at the Miami Seaquarium.
“It’s a big step for humans to realize that, you know, what we’ve done in the past can be corrected,” said Josh McInnes, a marine ecologist and marine mammal researcher at the University of British Columbia.
“In a way, we can kind of make up for some of this negative scope of humans that we’ve had over the decades with killer whales.”
It is expected it will take 18 to 24 months to relocate Lolita, who is also known as Tokitae or Toki, from the Miami facility back to the northwestern coast of the U.S.
“It also kind of concerned me, though, on the other end, because this is an animal that’s been in captivity for so long, and being in captivity for that long, we really don’t know how it’s going to adjust when we get it into the water,” McInnes said.
“No matter how long you’ve studied a population, we really don’t really have the sample size of how many killer whales have ever been put back in the ocean that have been in captivity for 50 years. Zero. So I feel like it’s going to be an interesting situation.”
There have been a few orca rehabilitation attempts over the years, some more successful than others.
