Bringing Lolita home: How to release a long-captive orca?

Trainer Marcia Hinton pets Lolita, a captive orca whale, during a performance at the Miami Seaquarium in Miami on March 9, 1995. Photo / AP

An ambitious plan announced last week to return Lolita, a killer whale held captive for more than a half-century, to her home waters in Washington’s Puget Sound thrilled those who have long advocated for her to be freed from her tank at the Miami Seaquarium.

But it also called to mind the release of Keiko - the star of the movie Free Willy - more than two decades ago. Keiko’s return to his native Iceland vastly improved upon his life in a Mexico City tank, but he failed to adapt to the wild and died five years later.

He is the only orca released after long-term captivity.

Advocates say their experience with Keiko will inform how they plan for Lolita’s return. But they also stress the differences between their cases.

While they hope to bring Lolita - also known as Tokitae, or Toki - to a whale sanctuary among the Pacific Northwest’s many islands, she might never again swim freely with her endangered family, including the nearly century-old whale believed to be her mother.

Here’s a look at Tokitae’s story.

How did Toki wind up in captivity?

Native American tribes revere orcas, considering them their relatives.

White settlers had a different view. Fishermen reviled the “blackfish” as competition for salmon and sometimes shot them.

That began to change in 1965, when a man named Ted Griffin bought a killer whale that had been caught in a fisherman’s net in British Columbia and towed it to the Seattle waterfront. The whale - Namu - became a sensation.

Namu soon died from an infection, but Griffin had set off a craze for capturing the Pacific Northwest’s killer whales and training them to perform, as the Seattle Times recounted in a 2018 historical piece. Griffin corralled dozens of orcas off Washington’s Whidbey Island in 1970. Several got caught and drowned when opponents cut the nets, intending to free them.

Many orcas remained nearby, declining to leave as their clan members were hauled out of the water. Among those kept was four-year-old Tokitae, later sold to the Miami Seaquarium.

By the early 1970s, at least 13 Northwest orcas had been killed and 45 delivered to theme parks around the world; Toki is the only one still alive. The round-ups reduced the Puget Sound resident population by about 40 per cent and helped cause problems with inbreeding that imperil them today.

Outrage over the captures helped prompt the US Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.

Karen McRea feeds frozen fish to Keiko, star of the movie 'Free Willy', in his pen off the coast of Westman Islands in Iceland on April 22, 1999. Photo / AP

Why bring Toki home?

Lolita, now 57, spent decades performing. Last year, the Miami Seaquarium announced it would no longer feature her under an agreement with regulators. The 5,000-pound (2,267-kilogram) animal lives in a tank 80 feet by 35 feet (24 metres by 11 metres) and 20 feet (six metres) deep.

Whales are intelligent, social creatures, and activists have long dreamed of returning Tokitae to her family.

The whale believed to be Toki’s mother is the matriarch of L-pod, one of three clans that make up the so-called southern resident killer whales, a genetically and socially distinct population that frequents the Salish Sea between Washington and British Columbia. There are 73 southern residents remaining.

Plans call for bringing Lolita to a netted whale sanctuary of about 15 acres (six hectares). She would be released into an enclosure the size of a couple of football fields within that sanctuary, where she would be under round-the-clock care.

“The first objective is to provide her the highest quality of life we can,” said Charles Vinick, a founder of the nonprofit Friends of Toki and executive director of the Whale Sanctuary Project. “Whether or not it becomes the dream of having her reunite with L-pod is something we have to rely on Lolita to show us.”

Because the southern residents are endangered, advocates would have to obtain additional permits if they ever wanted to return Toki fully to the wild. Advocates would likely have to show that introducing another ageing whale to feed wouldn’t burden the population further.

With financial backing from Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay, they have agreed to support Lolita long-term, whether she’s re-introduced or not.

For Raynell Morris, an elder of the Lummi Indian Tribe in Washington and a board member of Friends of Toki, the whale’s return is fundamental.

“Until she’s returned to her family, our family is broken,” Morris said. “When she comes home, the web of life will be repaired and restored, and our people will be repaired and restored.”

How do you move a 2.5-tonne whale?

When all the pieces are in place - which could take two years - Lolita will be placed on a stretcher. She’ll be lifted by crane into a tank placed on a truck, and the truck driven to a cargo plane.

She’ll be flown to Washington, loaded onto a barge, floated to the sanctuary and lowered by crane into her new home.

Toki’s transportation tank will be filled with freshwater - saltwater could ruin the plane in the event of a leak. Her caregivers will protect her skin with ointment.

Advocates will work with Washington’s Department of Natural Resources to pick the sanctuary site.

There, Toki can begin recovering the strength she might need to rejoin wild orcas, to relearn to hunt and to travel around 100 miles (161 kilometres) per day.

What did we learn from Keiko?

Keiko was about two when he was captured in 1979. He spent time in Iceland and Canada before being sold in 1985 to a theme park in Mexico City, where he lived in a tank filled with tap water mixed with salt.

In 1993 he was featured in Free Willy, prompting a campaign by schoolchildren to get him released. A facility was built at the Oregon Coast Aquarium where the emaciated Keiko could recover before his return to Iceland.

Keiko gained about 1,000 pounds (453 kilograms) in his first year in Oregon.

Vinick, who helped manage Keiko’s return, noted that it was always designed as a re-introduction effort. Keiko was in his early 20s - still young for an orca - when he was brought to Iceland in 1998. To teach him to hunt, trainers would launch fish around his pen with a slingshot. Eventually, they began escorting him on longer swims in the open ocean.

While Keiko would approach wild orcas at times, he would return to his trainers’ boat and generally sought out humans. He swam to Norway on his own - a journey of nearly 1,000 miles (1,609km). But there again he was attracted to boats and people, and he died, apparently of pneumonia, at about age 27.

“We already knew how easy it is to capture whales,” Vinick said. “What we learned with Keiko is how difficult it is to put one back.”

Malene Simon of the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, who conducted a scientific review of Keiko’s release, said she was pessimistic about Lolita’s chances to learn to hunt after 52 years of being fed by humans.

Still, Tokitae has some advantages. She was slightly older when she was captured, so she would have been already learning to hunt, and she might have more memory of her family songs. Further, researchers know who her family is, unlike with Keiko.

“It’ll be therapeutic for her, and she’ll get healthier,” said Howard Garrett, president of the board of the advocacy group Orca Network. “This is a step toward righting a great wrong that humans have done.”