On the 5th of January 2025, Marineland Antibes, near Cannes in the South of France, closed its doors for good, ahead of the ban on shows featuring cetaceans such as dolphins and whales, which the French government passed in 2021 and will come into effect in December 2026.
On December 4th, 2024, Marineland said it was shutting its doors because 90% of park visitors come to watch the orca and dolphin shows, so after the ban is enacted, there will not be enough visitors.
It is unclear what will happen to the park’s two orcas, a 23-year-old female named Wikie and her son Keijo, as well as 12 dolphins. Marineland initially planned to send the two orcas to a marine park in Japan, a plan which was met with uproar from animal rights groups. The French government then published 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 in the Canary Islands (where Keto the orca died recently).
On the 17th of October 2023, the orca Moana died at age 12 at Marineland. Moana was the first orca in Europe to be born from artificial insemination. Wikie, his mother, is still in Marineland with her son Keijo, now 10 years old. The French animal rights organisation One Voice had recorded abnormal stereotypic behaviour in both orcas (which is a sign of difficulties in coping with captive life) and that Moana had subdermal wounds.
There are still many orcas kept in captivity around the world, and they are all suffering by being forced to survive in tiny tanks compared with the over 100 miles of ocean they would swim in a day if they were in the wild, where they belong.
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