A French marine park has closed down definitively due to 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 and dozens of staff.
The closure of the park on Sunday 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.
Animal activists had been angered by Marineland’s plans to transfer its two orcas to Japan, a move France’s ecology minister said she opposed over Tokyo’s more lax animal welfare laws.
The future of the 4,000 other animals of 150 different species including dolphins, sea lions, turtles and fish also remains unclear.
In other words, “we passed a law to stop animal cruelty without thinking about how cruel it might be to pass it without thinking about their welfare.”
There’s also the fact that since these orcas have never learned to hunt, are often too acclimated to humans, and naturally live in family pods (that can’t be found again after so many years in captivity), they likely will not survive long in the wild.
Keiko (of Free Willy fame) was the first to try. He died of pneumonia about 6 years after he started training to live free.
https://www.worldanimalprotection.us/latest/blogs/story-keiko-first-captive-orca-returned-wild/