Lolita the killer whale is recovering from an unspecified illness, Miami Seaquarium said in response to a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals report that the 56-year-old orca is “deathly ill” with pneumonia.
The Virginia Key marine park also posted a live Facebook video on Tuesday showing its iconic star in a stadium tank eating, playing and waving its pectoral fin.
Lolita, also known as Tokitae and by the nickname Toki, was diagnosed as “under the weather” after a routine blood test came back as abnormal, according to Seaquarium’s attending veterinarian, Dr. Shelby Loos.
“Despite her very advanced age, she has been steadily improving and feeling much better,” Loos said in a statement. “I have the utmost confidence in the teams assembled to care for Toki and all our animals. Toki’s unprecedented longevity speaks to the quality care she has received over the years.”
PETA, citing unnamed sources identified as whistleblowers, warned that Lolita was in dire condition.
“Lolita has suffered for five decades in this despicable animal prison, and if she has pneumonia, that greatly increases the risk of dying she faces in this inadequate facility,” PETA Foundation Vice President and Deputy General Counsel for Animal Law Jared Goodman said in a statement on Sunday. “PETA is calling on the Seaquarium to shut down before any more sentient beings suffer and die in its tiny tanks.”
Lolita, who is 20 feet long and weighs 7,000 pounds, was captured in Puget Sound in 1970 and has been living in a 20-foot-deep tank at Seaquarium, where she performed twice daily shows until recently, when the stadium was closed to make improvements. No date has been set for its reopening and her return. Activists have argued for decades that her tank is too small and has caused physical and psychological trauma and she should be placed in a seaside sanctuary in her home waters.
The video played live on Seaquarium’s Facebook page showed Lolita’s trainer feeding and interacting with Lolita and then cuing the orca to perform a sampling of vocalizations — squawks, honks and trills.
“We heard you had some questions about our beautiful killer whale Toki because you care about her as much as we do,” a Seaquarium employee said while standing near the trainer. “We are so lucky to have an incredible trainer team that takes care of her and has eight to 10 interactions with her per day and we have an amazing vet team with Dr. Shelby Loos and Dr. Tom Reidarson — one of the professionals in the industry who has worked with killer whales for many years.
“As you can see, she is just beautiful and we’re really proud to have her here at Miami Seaquarium.”
The show may be on hiatus during construction but Lolita still has multiple sessions with her trainers each day including “play time, relationship building, healthcare and mock shows,” the employee said on camera. “Even when you guys aren’t here we’re doing mock shows to keep her mentally and physically stimulated and she finds those very fun and positive.
“We want to keep you updated. We’re going to make sure she stays in tip-top shape and receives a lot of enrichment every day,” she concluded as Lolita waved goodbye with her right pectoral fin.
PETA questioned whether Lolita was receiving adequate care as well as the expertise of Loos, saying Loos “reportedly possessed no orca experience when she was hired in 2019,” the report said. “She left in 2020 but was rehired last year after the Seaquarium fired its longtime head veterinarian after she expressed concern about the extent of animal suffering at the park.”
Loos countered in her statement that she works closely with Reidarson and Dr. Michael Renner, who has treated Lolita for years.
The PETA report on Lolita follows months of critical scrutiny of Seaquarium, long a target of animal activists. Dr. Magdalena Rodriguez, in-house veterinarian for 24 years, was fired in June because she said she had raised concerns about algae-infested water, spoiled food and poor marine mammal management that were highlighted during a U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection last summer.
The USDA’s September report said Rodriguez’s advice was often ignored. She had said Lolita was forced to perform head-first dives with an injured jaw and was too old to keep up her usual repertoire of tricks without risk of further injury.
An atypical string of deaths to five bottlenose dolphins and a baby California sea lion occurred between March 2019 and April 2020 at the aging marine park, and Rodriguez told the Miami Herald the trauma-related deaths may have been a result of inexperienced staff not spotting unusual animal behavior and placing incompatible animals together.
