The Two Captive Orcas Who Can Nearly Taste Freedom

In the frigid Atlantic waters off Nova Scotia’s east coast, two orcas—a mother and her calf—swim freely within a long bay. They dive up to eighteen metres to the ocean floor, where rock crabs, sea stars, and mussels live and slimy eelgrass sways with the current. They sense nearby fish; they hear each other’s clicks and pulses. They swim openly within the bay, the only barrier being an eight-inch mesh fence made of Dyneema—“the world’s strongest fiber.” The two have spent their entire lives in a tiny aquarium but are finally back in the ocean and, nearly, free. This is all a dream—part of a years-long vision of the Whale Sanctuary Project (WSP), which, since 2016, has worked to become the world’s first ocean sanctuary for orcas born in captivity. “We can give back to these animals what was taken from them,” says Lori Marino, a marine mammal neuroscientist and the founder of WSP. With decades of experience in biopsychology, Marino is best known for her appearance in Blackfish, the 2013 documentary about SeaWorld and the troubled orca Tilikum. There, she prevailed upon viewers to recognize orcas’ intelligence and emotional complexity, adding that all captive orcas are emotionally destroyed and psychologically traumatized, leading them to become “ticking time bombs.” Following the documentary’s release, public opinion shifted. SeaWorld reported losses and later announced that it would end its captive orca breeding program. Three years after Blackfish, California passed a law banning orca breeding as well as captivity for entertainment (a grandfather clause allows SeaWorld San Diego to hold onto their orcas); Canada introduced a similar law for cetaceans in 2019. The last orca in captivity in Canada, Kiska, died at Marineland in Niagara Falls in 2023. Now, at least fifty-five orcas remain in captivity worldwide, including eighteen held in SeaWorld parks across the United States. As laws ban the keeping of orcas in many parts of the world, they’ve become somewhat of a rare breed.

• Whales Are People Too
• Are Herring Making a Comeback in BC?
• The Shark Research That Upended Marine Conservation

For scientists and animal activists, these captive environments have proven time and again to be unsuitable—not just due to their size. Their strongest piece of evidence might be the ages of orcas at death. The average lifespan for wild males is about thirty to forty years, with a maximum of around sixty years, and the average lifespan for females is forty to fifty years, with some reaching their eighties. But captive orcas rarely make it past thirty. And so a question remains: What should be done with them? Should orcas be allowed to die in the aquariums where they are housed? Or is there a better solution, one that brings them closer to an environment from which they were taken? Three years after the release of Blackfish, Marino decided to open a sanctuary to accommodate orcas that were born in captivity and cannot hunt their own food—“the first of its kind, anywhere,” she says. She’s been dealing with red tape ever since. It took around two and a half years and an analysis of 135 sites in Washington State, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia to land on Port Hilford, Nova Scotia, as the ideal site, in 2020. It took another three years to conduct extensive environmental analyses, including an Archaeological Resource Impact Assessment. In 2022, WSP received an offer to lease from the Canadian government. WSP analyzed migratory birds in the area, mapped out the sea floor using lidar, recorded underwater noise levels, and tested some invertebrate species for arsenic left over from gold mining in the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. And the project has garnered support from the nearby community of Sherbrooke. Kwilmu’kw Maw-klusuaqn, a negotiation office that works on behalf of the Assembly of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Chiefs, has also expressed hopes for establishing a memorandum of understanding with WSP. The goal of WSP, Marino says, is “to give back to the ones who are in concrete tanks as much of a natural life as we possibly can.” But the sanctuary has not been built; there is nothing but waves and rocky coastline at Port Hilford Bay. To secure final funding, WSP needs orcas and has its eyes on two currently held at Marineland in Antibes, France: a twenty-four-year-old female named Wikie and her eleven-year-old son Keijo, both of whom have spent their entire lives in captivity. Around 150 kilometres up from Halifax, Port Hilford cradles a small bay along the Nova Scotian coast. Just south of Route 211, the bay exists in relative obscurity—the nearest gas station is fourteen kilometres away, in Sherbrooke. One of the few businesses in the area is aptly named Forgotten Shore Farm. While Marino insists that progress is being made to turn this port into an over 100-acre sanctuary, she concedes that there just isn’t enough money to complete WSP as it stands. They’re still short millions to build the sanctuary, with additional funds needed for maintenance. There is currently a visitor centre in Sherbrooke where the public can learn about the project. But an animal care and veterinary centre; a marine operations, security, and administration building; a net loft and generator storage building; and an observation tower have all yet to be built. It’s a Catch-22, says Marino: if she can confirm whales will be donated to the sanctuary, that will likely bring in funding. But it’s hard to make a case for bringing animals to a sanctuary that doesn’t have the money. Then, in November 2021, the government of France outlawed cetacean shows and captivity, except in sanctuaries and for scientific research, with the ban set to take effect after five years. Marineland Antibes’s orcas—Wikie and Keijo, along with Wikie’s brother Inouk and her son Moana—were to be transferred to another facility by December 2026. Moana passed away in 2023 and Inouk the following year. In the spring of 2024, WSP shared details on its website about an “accelerated plan” for the Nova Scotia sanctuary to accommodate Wikie and Keijo. The plan involved building a 6,650-square-metre pen in Port Hilford to allow the orcas to become acclimated to the area while the rest of the sanctuary was built. Once construction was completed and Wikie and Keijo were deemed ready, they would leave the pen and be free to roam throughout the wider sanctuary space. Aside from living in a space 117 times the size of the orca enclosure at Marineland, they would receive veterinary care and be fed dead fish. And they wouldn’t have to perform shows for it. But would the orcas thrive at WSP? There is no precedent for putting captive-born orcas in a sanctuary. Keiko, the orca known for his role in 1993’s Free Willy, is probably the closest comparison. He was born in the ocean, and after nineteen years in captivity, he was returned to Icelandic waters and supported in entering the open ocean. He eventually swam off to Norway, where he lived for about a year and a half before dying of pneumonia. “Regardless of how well-intended people are, releasing a killer whale from the only life it has ever known amounts to cruelty,” Robert Pitman, a marine mammalogist and an affiliate at Oregon State University’s Marine Mammal Institute, wrote in an email to The Walrus. Still, he wrote, “I doubt that killer whales can thrive in captivity.” Hanne Strager, a biologist and co-founder of the Whale Center in Andenes, Norway, compares releasing captive-born orcas into the ocean to letting a dog go into the woods and expecting it to behave like a wolf. She says that once the damage of long-time captivity has been done, it’s very difficult to undo it in a way that is good for the orcas.
On its website, WSP acknowledges that while the team “would like to see all captive animals returned to their native habitat, this is not always possible.” The sanctuary would provide “lifetime care” for captive-born orcas without survival skills.

 When the French government officials reviewed WSP’s bid to take Wikie and Keijo last June, they called it, in French, “the most credible innovative solution among sanctuary projects,” despite an element of risk. However, WSP’s plan was missing critical pieces: How would a sick animal be captured for medical care? Would the strength of nearby storms and tides pose an issue? Would the orcas suffer during such a long transport? Most importantly, when could it actually be built? 

 “Luckily, I don’t have to decide this,” says Strager. “Obviously, the problem should never have been there.” At one point last year, Marino expected to welcome the orcas to Nova Scotia in the spring of 2025; in November, she hoped for the summer. But she won’t lose hope until the moment they’re transferred to another tank. Today, Wikie and Keijo circle their enclosure at Marineland Antibes, which closed to the public permanently on January 5 this year. The orcas no longer perform in shows or interact with visitors. According to WSP, the total area of all the orca pools at Marineland is 3,458 square metres—less than an acre. “[Orcas] can roam thousands of kilometres in just a few weeks,” says Strager. “It’s evident that it would be unhealthy to be in a small tank. It’s not something that I need to even argue.” Wikie was born at that Marineland in 2001 to Sharkan and Kim II, both of whom were captured from Icelandic waters as young orcas in the 1980s, and who would eventually die in the park. Wikie’s older brother, Inouk, and her half-brother, Valentin, shared the enclosure alongside Valentin’s mother, Freya, who gave birth to four stillborn calves over the course of her life at Marineland. Wikie gave birth to a calf named Moana in 2011 via artificial insemination, and then had Keijo in 2013 (Keijo’s father is Valentin, making Wikie both his mother and half-aunt). In the wild, Strager says, pods are typically composed of six to fifteen individuals, something a marine park could never accommodate. Orcas are found in every ocean, with a wide range of diets, forms of communication, and behaviours. As outlined in Blackfish, captive orcas were once regularly transferred between facilities without regard for the bonds they may have formed with one another; calves were taken from their mothers and sold. Wikie was relatively lucky in this respect: she lived in the same park with her family, including her two offspring and her brothers (her sister, Shouka, was transferred to the United States in 2002). But then came a series of deaths at Marineland. Freya died in 2015 from an undisclosed illness. Four months later, severe storms caused flooding in the area, contaminating the pool water. Valentin died a few days later, with an official cause of death listed as intestinal torsion. In 2023, Moana died unexpectedly of septicemia at age twelve, and Inouk died in March 2024 due to subacute fibrinous enteritis and peritonitis. Of the six orcas that have died at Marineland since 2000—excluding the two stillbirths—males ranged from twelve to twenty-five years old, while females were around twenty-three to thirty-three years old. According to WSP, by the time Inouk died, he “had ground his teeth to the pulp, biting the edges of the tanks.” A report prepared by orca expert Ingrid Visser for One Voice in 2023 described Wikie’s subdermal tissue damage and her teeth ground down from chewing. The report also noted that she exhibited repetitive, abnormal behaviours that are often connected to boredom and poor well-being. A report commissioned by the French secretary of state for biodiversity in November 2023, following Moana’s death, did not raise doubts about the three remaining orcas’ health. Muriel Arnal, the president of One Voice, calls that report into question. She has a stark outlook for the orcas that remain at Marineland Antibes. “Their health is very poor,” she says. “We fear they’ll die soon.” For Arnal, it’s not just a question of worn teeth or skin lesions. As Marino articulated in Blackfish, the emotional capacity of a killer whale is enormous, as is the potential for the mental breakdown of those held captive. They can be gentle and playful. A report published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences in 2018 featured recordings of Wikie repeating one of her trainers’ names and counting to three. Experts suggest they can mourn—a killer whale in the Pacific Northwest garnered wide media attention in 2018 when she was spotted carrying her dead calf with her for at least seventeen days over 1,000 miles. And they can commit horrific acts of violence in what can best be described as mental breakdowns. In 1980, an orca named Hugo died of a brain aneurysm at Miami Seaquarium. He was known for regularly bashing his head against the side of the tank. And Tilikum, the orca highlighted in Blackfish, broke his trainer’s neck and jaw and tore off her left arm and scalp. When the French law was passed in 2021, it gave Marino hope that Wikie and Keijo could finally be moved to a pen where they could live in a larger, more natural—and therefore healthier—space.  Marineland Antibes is also keen to move the animals. They were key to their business model but now pose a financial burden. “While 90 percent of visitors choose to come to Marineland to admire the orcas and dolphins, the November 30, 2021, law, which forbids cetacean performances, forces Marineland to consider closing,” the organization announced in a 2024 French press release. With the aquarium now closed, the orcas bring in no income, while costing around €500,000 per year just to maintain each orca, according to a 2024 report from L’Inspection générale de l’environnement et du développement durable, a body that advises the French government on environmental issues. Marineland does have valuable assets to help allay these costs: the orcas themselves. According to Arnal, each orca is worth millions, and they’ve become more valuable in recent years as captures have become less common and since SeaWorld has ended its breeding program. For this reason, Wikie and Keijo are valuable to marine parks, Marino says. “They want breeders. They want to replenish their captive stock. That’s why they want these animals,” she says. “They want baby orcas, which bring people through the turnstiles.” Several options have presented themselves to house the orcas, including a marine park in Japan, other potential sanctuaries, and a zoo and aquarium called Loro Parque in Tenerife, Spain. Loro Parque’s orca welfare record, as outlined by many advocacy organizations, is not much better than that of Marineland Antibes; Marino describes it as “dismal.” It has held nine orcas since it started keeping them in 2006; four remain. Four have died since 2021, including, in November 2024, Keto, an orca that once crushed the chest of one of its trainers. (In an interview with The Walrus, Javier Almunia, a doctor of marine sciences and director of the Loro Parque Fundación, claims that the recent deaths among the aquarium’s orcas were natural: “There is no evidence on if the welfare of the animals is diminished in the facilities . . . under human care.” The total tank volume for orcas at Loro Parque is around half that of Marineland.) Activists fear that, if transferred there, Wikie and Keijo will be separated, that they’ll be used for breeding and therefore continue the cycle of captivity, and that the orcas’ health will continue to decline. (Wikie and Keijo, Almunia says, would only be separated for short periods and only to meet health requirements.) In December, thirty-four animal welfare organizations signed a petition urging the French minister of ecological transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, to prevent the sale to Loro Parque. By the time Marineland Antibes closed its doors to the public, two main options remained: Spain’s Loro Parque and Nova Scotia’s Whale Sanctuary Project. On January 20, 2025, WSP received a one-page letter. Dated January 16, Célia de Lavergne, director of water and biodiversity at France’s Ministry of Ecological Transition, thanked WSP’s executive director for the application submitted nine months prior as part of an official expression of interest in the determination of Wikie’s and Keijo’s fate. A committee had reviewed it, she wrote, and decided that the sanctuary’s time frame might not line up with Marineland’s. Also, de Lavergne noted that the water temperature in Nova Scotia could pose an issue for the orcas if they don’t adapt quickly, despite WSP’s assertion that, as Wikie and Keijo are orcas of Icelandic descent, they would easily adapt. This February, Wolfgang Kiessling, founder and president of Loro Parque, told the Spanish newspaper El Mundo that Wikie and Keijo had been assigned to Loro Parque; his reasoning was that there wasn’t a sanctuary for them to go to. On March 18, Pannier-Runacher announced that the orcas and dolphins housed at Marineland would likely have to be relocated to another aquarium while a marine sanctuary—like the kind WSP is proposing—is built in Europe. In April, an official in France’s Ministry of Ecological Transition told AFP that Spanish authorities had blocked the transfer of Marineland’s orcas and dolphins to Loro Parque or to the Madrid Zoo Aquarium, alleging that a Spanish scientific agency had found that the enclosures in the parks “did not meet minimum standards in terms of area, volume and depth” for the animals. Today, the orcas and dolphins remain in Marineland Antibes. According to a representative from the nonprofit C’est Assez!, the European orca sanctuary that Pannier-Runacher envisions cannot—like WSP’s sanctuary—be constructed overnight. As Marino can attest, it takes years and millions of dollars to build one—and there’s no blueprint. “Everyone thought we’d be done by now,” she says. “Now we know what that curve is, and it’s not for the faint hearted.” There may still be hope that Marino’s vision for Wikie and Keijo will become a reality. If it does, she wants the two orcas to be the first of many returned to relative freedom. It will be the beginning of a movement, she says, one that will finally spell the end of captivity for cetaceans. “Their lives are ruined, let’s face it,” she says. “They’ve already been so badly impacted by what’s been done to them. But it doesn’t mean their lives couldn’t get better, and it doesn’t mean that we don’t owe it to them to try.”The post The Two Captive Orcas Who Can Nearly Taste Freedom first appeared on The Walrus.