PETA, ‘Animal Hero Kids’ in Capes to ‘Fly’ to Orca’s Rescue

For Immediate Release:
May 31, 2021

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

Wearing capes and accompanied by a giant inflatable “orca,” young members of Animal Hero Kids are joining forces with PETA to kick off their summer vacation by leading a PETA protest outside the Miami Seaquarium on Tuesday. They’ll point out that the orca Lolita was even younger than they are when she was abducted from her ocean home over 50 years ago—and they’ll demand that she be released to a seaside sanctuary.

“Kids home for the summer holidays want to know when Lolita will be back home near her family pod,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on the Miami Seaquarium to end this orca’s decades of loneliness by retiring her to a seaside sanctuary in her home waters, where she could communicate with her family members at last.”

Animal Hero Kids founder and longtime Florida wildlife rehabilitator Susan Hargreaves adds, “There is a sea-change in the public view of capturing and confining wildlife. It is unacceptable to capture marine mammals and tear them away from their family, like Lolita, and hold them captive.”

At the Seaquarium, Lolita is confined to the smallest orca tank in the world, where she can’t dive, swim more than a few body lengths in any direction, seek shelter from the blazing summer sun, or form social relationships with any others of her own species. The other orca once kept in the same tank, Hugo, died after repeatedly ramming his head into a wall in 1980.

Where:           Miami Seaquarium, 4400 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami

When:             Tuesday, June 1, 12 noon

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to use for entertainment”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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