French marine park closes over law banning orca shows
Sun, January 5, 2025
The closure has saddened many
A marine park in southern France shut its doors permanently on Sunday following a 2021 law banning shows featuring whales and dolphins. Marineland's two remaining orcas, the last ones in captivity in the country, now face an uncertain future.
A French marine park on Sunday closed down definitively over a 2021 law banning shows featuring marine mammals, leaving uncertain futures for the two last orcas in captivity in the country, hundreds of other animals as well as dozens of staff.
The closure of the park was marked by a final show by its two orcas, Wikie and Keijo who were received with rapturous applause by crowds who came for its last day of operations.
Attendance had fallen sharply in recent years but many visitors and employees alike expressed their dismay.
"Our hearts are in pieces," said Salome Mathis, a young keeper who came to say goodbye to her former colleagues at the water park.
The two orcas -- also known as killer whales -- themselves face an uncertain future.
Animal activists had been angered by Marineland's plans to transfer its two killer whales to Japan, a move France's ecology minister said she opposed over Tokyo's more lax animal welfare laws.
It employed 103 permanent staff and some 500 seasonal workers.
(AFP)
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Closure of French marine park sparks outcry over future of its two orcas
Jack Guy, CNN
Mon, January 6, 2025
The closure of a marine zoo in the south of France has sparked intense debate over the future of its inhabitants, including two beloved orcas.
Marineland Antibes, near Cannes, closed for good on Sunday, with management citing legislation banning shows featuring cetaceans such as dolphins and whales, which the French government passed in 2021.
The law, which will come into effect in December 2026, also bans direct contact between visitors and cetaceans.
French lawmakers passed a ban on shows featuring whales and dolphins in 2021. - Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images
In a statement published December 4, Marineland said it was shutting its doors because 90% of visitors to the park come to watch the orca and dolphin shows.
It said it had taken the decision with “deep sadness,” and was working closely with French authorities to rehome the animals.
At present, though, it is unclear what will happen to the park’s two orcas – a 23-year-old female named Wikie and her son Keijo, 10 – as well as 12 dolphins.
Marineland initially planned to send Wikie and Keijo to a marine park in Japan. This plan met with uproar from animal rights groups, which said the move would be harmful to their wellbeing, citing the fact that Japan still practices whaling and does not have equivalent laws to European countries on the treatment of animals.
The French government then stepped in, publishing a report in which it said that the only acceptable options were to send the orcas to a new sanctuary in Nova Scotia, Canada, or to rehouse them at the Loro Parque marine park in Tenerife, which is part of the Spanish Canary Islands.
Loro Parque has housed orcas since 2006 and would offer similar conditions to Marineland, according to the government report.
But animal rights campaigners are pushing for the whales to be rehoused in the Canadian sanctuary, where they would no longer be made to perform in shows.
Muriel Arnal, president of French animal rights organization One Voice, told CNN that the sanctuary is the best option for the mother-son pair.
“Japan is not at all a good solution,” she said, adding that Loro Parque would also pose problems.
“They would continue to live in captivity, in smaller pools,” in the Spanish park, Arnal said, adding that Wikie and Keijo would probably be separated so that Wikie could reproduce, breaking the family bonds that help orcas deal with the stresses of life in captivity.
And while there is a risk in moving the orcas to a sanctuary, a plan is in place to transfer them first to a sea pen before releasing them into a 44-hectare (109-acre) area of ocean, Arnal said.
The orcas will remain at Marineland while their fate is decided, she added, with public pressure increasing.
“It’s incredible how many people are mobilizing around this,” Arnal said.
CNN has contacted Marineland Antibes for comment.
'Humans are all they know' - Fate of Killer whales uncertain as marine zoo shuts
George Sandeman - BBC News
Sun, January 5, 2025
An orca leaping out of the water while performing at Marineland Antibes on 2 January [AFP]
The fate of two killer whales is uncertain following the closure of a marine zoo in France on Sunday.
Campaigners and the zoo's managers have been locked in disagreement about what should happen to the orca whales with the French government already blocking one proposal to rehome them.
Last month Marineland Antibes, located near Cannes in the French Riviera, said it would permanently shut on 5 January following new animal welfare laws.
The legislation, which bans the use of dolphins and whales in marine zoo shows, was passed in 2021 but comes into effect next year.
Marineland, which describes itself as the largest of its kind in Europe, currently keeps two killer whales - Wikie, 23, and her 11-year-old son Keijo.
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Managers say shows featuring killer whales and dolphins attract 90% of Marineland's visitors – and that without it the business isn't viable.
Several destinations for the whales have been proposed but there is disagreement on where they should go and what should happen to them.
Most experts agree that releasing the two whales, which are Icelandic orcas specifically, into the wild would not be suitable as both were born in captivity and would not have the skills to survive.
"It's a bit like taking your dog out of the house and sending him into the woods to live freely as a wolf," says Hanne Strager.
In 2023 the marine biologist published The Killer Whale Journals, which details her decades long interest in the ocean predator and how they behave
"Those whales, that have spent their entire lives in captivity, their closest relationship is with humans. They are the ones who have provided them with food, care, activities and social relations.
"Killer whales are highly social animals, as social as we [humans] are, and they depend on social bonds. They have established those bonds with their trainers … They depend on humans and that is the only thing they know."
Campaigners want Wikie and Keijo to be sent to a sanctuary instead of zoos in Japan and Tenerife [AFP]
A deal to send Wikie and Keijo to a marine zoo in Japan, backed by managers at Marineland, caused outcry among campaigners who said they would receive worse treatment.
Last November the French government blocked the deal, saying the animal welfare laws in Japan were relaxed compared to those in Europe and that the 13,000km (8,000 mile) journey would cause stress to the orcas.
Another option is to send them to a Spanish marine zoo in the Canary Islands.
Loro Parque, in Tenerife, complies with European animal welfare standards but campaigners fear Wikie and Keijo will still be made to perform there.
There have also been several orca deaths there in the last few years.
A 29-year-old male called Keto passed away in November and three other orcas died there between March 2021 and September 2022.
Loro Parque say scientific examinations of those three orcas by the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria show the deaths were unavoidable.
Katheryn Wise, from the charity World Animal Protection (Wap), tells the BBC: "It would be devastating for Wikie and Keijo to end up in another entertainment venue like Loro Parque – from one whale jail to another."
Wap want the orcas to be rehomed in an adapted ocean bay.
"[We and] many others have urged the government of France to do everything it can to facilitate the movement of the orcas to a sanctuary off the coast of Nova Scotia."
'We'll close off a bay for them'
The organisation hoping to build the facility in eastern Canada say it would be able to attract funding if it received a commitment from the French government to send the two whales there.
The Whale Sanctuary Project (WSP) proposes to close off an area of seawater measuring 40 hectares (98 acres) with nets.
Wikie and Keijo could then use the large expanse of water, with human support from vets and welfare workers, until the end of their lives.
The average lifespan of a male killer whale is about 30 years, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration agency. Females usually live about 50 years.
"Life at the sanctuary will be as close as is possible to what they would have experienced growing up in the ocean," say the WSP. "It will be a new life that will make up for so much of what went before."
This kind of project has been done before.
Keiko, the orca that starred in the 1993 move Free Willy, was rescued from captivity in 1996 before being taken to a bay in Iceland in 1998.
Unlike Wikie and Keijo, he was born in the wild and was able to relearn some of the necessary survival skills while living in the bay for four years.
He eventually left with a pod of orcas he had joined and swam to Norway where he died in 2003 following an infection.
Strager warns that the proposed sanctuary might feel as alien to Wikie and Keijo as open ocean would.
"We have this conception that animals enjoy freedom in the same sense we do, 'now they are free and they will love it.'
"We don't know if they see freedom the same way ... Are they going to be scared because it is so different to what they're used to? I don't know."
She tells the BBC: "I don't think there are any good solutions for animals that have been kept in captivity their whole lives."
Pamela Anderson called for the closure of Marineland Antibes at a protest in 2017 [AFP]
More than 4,000 animals will be moved out of Marineland, which was founded in 1970 by Count Roland de la Poype.
He was a decorated fighter pilot who fought during World War Two before establishing himself in the plastics industry and opening Marineland due to his interest in sea life.
The closure of his passion project is the latest step in a campaign targeting marine zoos that has gained momentum over the last 15 years.
The actress Pamela Anderson called for the closure of Marineland in 2017 and held a protest outside its entrance saying "captivity kills".
In 2013, the documentary Blackfish detailed how an orca called Tilikum killed trainer Dawn Brancheau after a show at SeaWorld Orlando in 2010.
He grabbed her and dragged her into the water where he tore off her arm and drowned her.
The film also outlines how Tilikum was also involved in the deaths of two other people.
Researchers interviewed in the film argued that orcas captured from the wild and trained to perform become violent in captivity.
Tilikum was involved in the deaths of three people while kept captive at SeaWorld [Getty Images]
Visitor numbers and financial revenues at SeaWorld suffered in the aftermath of the documentary and in 2016 they suspended their captive breeding programme.
They rejected calls to release their remaining orcas into the wild, saying they would likely die if left to fend for themselves.
Eighteen months ago they opened a new marine zoo in the United Arab Emirates, SeaWorld's first outside the US.
The new facility in Abu Dhabi is a $1.2bn (£966m) venture with state-owned leisure developer Miral and boasts the largest aquarium in the world.
There aren't any orcas on show here but, to the dismay of campaigners, dolphins still are.
Wap have helped convince Expedia not to sell any more holidays involving performances by dolphins in captivity and want other travel companies to do the same.
"Blackfish was more than a hit – it was a phenomenon," writes the scientist Naomi Rose in a report by Wap. "I am convinced it pushed western society past the tipping point on the subject of captive cetaceans."
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