No concrete plans exist to transport Tokitae, the Southern Resident orca currently housed at the Miami Seaquarium, back to Washington waters, federal agencies said this week.
In late March this year, leaders at the seaquarium, alongside Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay and members of the environmental nonprofit Friends of Toki, announced ambitious plans to move the orca from a pen at the seaquarium back to waters in the Pacific Northwest, the natural habitat of Southern Resident orcas.
The plan calls for Tokitae — who performed for decades under the stage name Lolita, though members of the Lummi Nation call her Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut — to be transported by plane from an 80-by-35-foot tank in Miami to a large net pen in an unknown location in waters between Washington and Canada. There, trainers and veterinarians would keep a close eye on the whale while teaching her how to hunt for meals and perhaps reconnect with the 73 wild Southern Residents — if that’s even possible.
At the time of the announcement, representatives estimated it may take 18 to 24 months to complete the transition.
Now, though, Irsay — who promised to fund (at least, in part) the estimated $20 million transfer — says it’ll be less than one year before the orca returns to Washington waters, where she was first captured as a 4-year-old in Penn Cove. The whale is now more than 50 years old.
“LOLITA UPDATE,” Irsay tweeted on April 30. “All united to expedite Lolita to ocean pen w/caretakers in her home waters of Wash. State. Goal 6-9 months.”
A May 1 press release from the seaquarium and Friends of Lolita, too, said plans to move the orca were in the works.
Irsay’s timeline appears unlikely. Plans to transport the orca remain tenuous, at best, and federal authorities responsible for Southern Residents and ocean management have not received any proposals.
“At this point, nothing has really been presented to us in the terms of any type of plan or proposal,” said Michael Milstein, a public affairs officer for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “We don’t have anything to evaluate at this point.”
NOAA is the federal organization tasked with monitoring and protecting Southern Residents, an endangered group of 73 salmon-eating orcas that reside in the waters along Oregon, Washington and Canada. The orcas were declared endangered in 2005 after decades of live capture, environmental degradation, reduced prey availability and ongoing noise disturbance from boats. The agency would have to approve any plans for an ocean net pen before construction could begin.
Other federal agencies, too, might be involved in the transfer. Historically, the transport of orcas and other massive marine animals has been left to the United States Department of Defense (DOD). The department maintains some of the only planes large enough to fly the animals, which can weigh up to 16,000 pounds and span 30 feet in length.
The DOD was responsible for the 1998 transportation of Keiko, the star of the “Free Willy” franchise, when it used a C-17 Globemaster III to move the killer whale from captivity to waters off the coast of Iceland. Though much planning went into the effort to free him, the orca died very young, just a few years after his release into the wild.
At this point, though, the DOD is not involved in negotiations. When asked about involvement in Tokitae’s relocation, the department said it was “not tracking this situation.”
As with Tokitae, the plan to release Keiko was controversial. The orca was unable to reconnect with other pods and struggled to hunt on his own, even after years of training. Reports called the release “a failure,” and said the whale could not survive without humans after spending a majority of its life in captivity.
Tokitae has spent most of her life under human care, and is the only remaining Southern Resident in captivity. For a while, Tokitae was housed with another Southern Resident named Hugo, though that whale suffered from psychosis — common in captive whales — and rammed his head into the walls of their shared tank until he died.
Even so, members of the Lummi Nation, who consider orcas their “relatives under the water,” are hopeful for the whale’s return.
Raynell Morris, who sits on the board of Friends of Toki and is a member of the Lummi Nation, said Tokitae is strong and wants to return home. Morris has traveled between Lummi grounds in Whatcom County to Miami to visit Tokitae several times and leads regular prayers for her return.
“She is stable in her health and her spirit is getting stronger,” Morris said following a prayer gathering last week. “We’re not sure when she’s coming home. We know she’s coming, but she needs our love and support until she’s right here in front of us.”
Morris said moving Tokitae is “the easy part”: it’s the siting and construction of a sea pen that present challenges.
“If she can survive over 50 years in a pail of water, being fed rotten food, being made to perform when she was grieving Hugo, made to perform when she was injured, made to perform in 90-degree heat, she’ll thrive in her home waters,” Morris said.
