Metro Ford Cuts Ties With Miami Seaquarium After PETA Appeal

Company Nabs Vegan Whale-Shaped Chocolates in Thanks for Compassionate Move

For Immediate Release:
April 25, 2019

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

After hearing from PETA that the Miami Seaquarium keeps a lone orca named Lolita in the smallest orca tank in the world, Metro Ford of Miami made the compassionate decision to end its multi-year partnership with the marine park. In thanks, PETA sent the dealership a box of delicious, vegan whale-shaped chocolates.

“Metro Ford of Miami did the right thing in distancing itself from an operation that has held a solitary orca in a tiny tank for decades, pumped her with drugs, and forced her to perform tricks in chemically treated water,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA urges the Seaquarium to move Lolita to a seaside sanctuary where she would be able to dive deep, feel the ocean currents, and finally live the way she was meant to.”

In the wild, orcas may travel as far as 140 miles in a day with their family pods, but at the Miami Seaquarium, Lolita is held without anyone of her kind in a cramped tank that measures just 20 feet deep at its deepest point and 12 feet at its shallowest. She was taken from the wild nearly 50 years ago and has been without an orca companion since 1980, when her tankmate died after ramming his head into the side of their tank in an act that some believe was suicide or a reaction to frustration.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, which is the human-supremacist view that other species exist for humans to display, breed, or sell for profit or amusement. The group has long called on the Miami Seaquarium to retire Lolita to a seaside sanctuary—as has Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine and the City Commission, which voted unanimously on the matter—where she could swim in her native waters and maybe even see her mother again.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.