Theme park abandoned and frozen in time where Orca whales left to rot alive

Daily Mirror

14-05-2025

Killer whales Wikie, 23, and her 11-year-old son Keijo, who have spent their whole lives in captivity, have been left inside their crumbling tank five months after the closure of their home. Now campaigners say they're at risk of dying from their unsanitary conditions
Time is running out for two killer whales who have been left abandoned in a rotting marine zoo - and they could die without urgent intervention.
Wikie, who is 23, and her 11-year-old son Keijo spend their long days mindlessly swimming around the same crumbling enclosure as their fate hangs in the balance.
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The orcas, who were both born in captivity so could never survive in the wild, were left in their decaying tanks when Marineland Antibes in southern France closed permanently in January 2025.
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Now left without any mental stimulation, the orcas are forced to fill their days searching for enrichment in their enclosure as green algae slowly covers the abandoned park.
Aerial footage taken by activists Tidebreakers above the rotting theme park shows the grim conditions, in which the animals now live. Green slime gathers around the boundary of their pool, while a neighbouring tank is half-full of murky brown water.
In a nearby small tank, 12 stranded bottlenose dolphins are the only other inhabitants of the park - and nobody knows what will happen to them, either.
A skeleton staff come in to feed the animals to meet the management company's legal requirements for care, but are not providing much in the way of mental enrichment - vital for bonded pod orcas.
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Wikie and Keijo are the last two captive orcas in France, and spent years performing tricks with their trainers for braying crowds. They remain under the legal protection of the Marineland management until they can be rehomed, but their owners have insisted the orcas must "leave now" for their own welfare.
"Marineland reaffirms the extreme urgency of transferring the animals to an operational destination," it added.
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Marketa Schusterova, co-founder of Tidebreakers, told the Mirror how the two orcas have already lost half of their bonded pod. Wikie's son Moana died suddenly in 2023 at the age of just 12, and her other son Inouk was killed a year afterwards by ingesting a tiny piece of metal that fell into his tank.
"We know from reviewing footage [of Marineland] that the tank is causing a hazard," says Marketa. "We know that it's not being cleaned, it's falling apart. It's a hazard for these orca every day.
"We are very worried that the situation is so critical, and the water quality is deteriorating to the point that it's going to cause health issues to these whales, and they're going to be euthanised before they get a chance to actually see a sanctuary," she added, "which is tragic because the male, Keijo, is only 11 years old, the mother is 23. Orcas in the wild can live to human age, outside of captivity they can live to 70 or 80 years old."
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A potential move to Loro Parque marine zoo in Tenerife was recently blocked, despite the zoo being home to four of its own captive orcas - including a calf born in March this year - on the grounds that their new tank would "not meet the minimum requirements in terms of surface area, volume and depth necessary to house the specimens in optimal conditions", according to the scientific panel that needs to approve any moves.
Another move to a marine park in Japan was also ruled out, while the French ecology minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said in February that she wanted to find a European sanctuary for the pair - but hadn't yet found a suitable site.
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Some campaigners are calling for the mother and son pair to be moved to a site in Canada's Nova Scotia, where they would have the run of a 1,00-acre bay cordoned off with 1,600m of escape-proof nets.
The Whale Sanctuary Project (WSP) say their site is the "only option left" for Wikie and Keijo, where they would be free to swim somewhere bigger than a pool.
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But Tidebreakers argue that the WSP project isn't anywhere near ready and fear the orcas will die "before WSP has even got a stick in the ground".
The best outcome, Marketa believes, would be to create temporary holding tanks custom-built to the orcas' specifications until a permanent sanctuary can be made for their forever home.
"Quite simply, if Wikie and Keijo are left in these conditions, they're going to get sick and die," she added.
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WSP's CEO Charles Vinick was previously involved in the sanctuary built to house Keiko, the black-and-white star of 1993 film Free Willy, who had been born in the wild and taken into captivity in 1979 when he was just two years old.
Keiko was captured off the coast of Iceland and sold to various theme parks, made to perform tricks. He became dependent on human contact, and was 'hired' by Warner Brothers to be the star of their movie. Keiko began filming in 1992 but his health declined throughout production.
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He developed skin problems, stomach ulcers and lost weight drastically - so much so that when Free Willy was released in cinemas, hundreds of thousands of viewers rang a phone line begging for Keiko to be freed.
In response to the outcry, Warner Brothers agreed to retire their star performer and Keiko was moved to an aquarium in Oregon to begin his recovery. His instructors were told not to make eye contact with him to reduce his dependency on humans - but their sudden change in behaviour only confused him.
He eventually managed to relearn some survival skills and was released into the wild in 2002 with a pod of orcas he joined. Tragically, he died just a year later from pneumonia after picking up an infection.