PETA Statement: Lolita’s Long-Overdue Return to Home Waters

For Immediate Release:
March 28, 2023

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

The Miami Seaquarium has announced a news conference for Thursday that will apparently address plans to move Lolita the orca back to her home waters in the Pacific Northwest. Please see the following statement from PETA Foundation Vice President and General Counsel for Animal Law Jared Goodman:

If Lolita is finally returned to her home waters, there will be cheers from around the world, including from PETA, which has pursued several lawsuits on Lolita’s behalf and battered the Seaquarium with protests demanding her freedom for years. If the Seaquarium agrees to move her, it’ll offer her long-awaited relief after five miserable decades in a cramped tank and send a clear signal to other parks that the days of confining highly intelligent, far-ranging marine mammals to dismal prisons are done and dusted.

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, listen to The PETA Podcast, or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.