Park Must Release Lonely Orca Lolita to a Seaside Sanctuary, Group Says
For Immediate Release:
November 5, 2020
Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382
Miami – After being shut down for six months, the Miami Seaquarium will reopen to the public on Friday—and PETA supporters will be there with signs proclaiming, “50 Years in Lockdown,” in protest of the park’s imprisonment of orca Lolita, who has spent five decades in the smallest orca tank in the world, which does not meet federal minimum standards.
When: Friday, November 6, 10 a.m.
Where: Miami Seaquarium, 4400 Rickenbacker Cswy., Miami
The Seaquarium’s parent company also owns Marineland in Antibes, France, where leaders have just announced a ban on breeding or acquiring orcas and other dolphins for marine parks and that there will be a transition period for moving the existing captive marine mammals to seaside sanctuaries. PETA is calling on the company to include Lolita in its cetacean-release plan.
“Lolita can’t dive any deeper than the length of her own body, swim more than 80 feet in any direction, or even glimpse another orca,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “We know too much about these intelligent animals to allow them to suffer so hideously in the name of entertainment, and PETA is calling on the Miami Seaquarium to end this lonely orca’s 50 years of lockdown now.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, which is a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
