Official Lolita The Whale Blog

NOAA Posted this press releas back in January and I just came across it and thought I would post it here.

posted 01/24/2008

PRESS RELEASE: NOAA Fisheries Service today released its final recovery plan for Puget Sound’s killer whales, saying that recovery of the region’s iconic marine mammals will be a long-term effort requiring community support and that its plan provides a roadmap to help restore the population to healthy levels.

Killer whales appear in Puget Sound typically in May, with some remaining into the fall before most leave for the open ocean in the winter months. Puget Sound killer whales are officially known as Southern Residents and this distinct population was listed for protection under the federal Endangered Species Act in late 2005. Today’s recovery plan is a requirement of that listing.

The population experienced an alarming decline of almost 20 percent from 1996 to 2001, when only 79 animals were counted. The current population stands at 88, although at its peak in the 1990s, it was as high as 97 animals.

The fisheries agency said availability of prey, pollution and effects from vessels and sound are major threats to the whales’ health. In addition, it said, the whales’ inherently small population size and vulnerability to oil spills were important factors considered in the recovery plan.

The agency said, however, that there is considerable uncertainty regarding which threats were responsible for the decline in the population or which may be most important to address for recovery. The plan identifies ongoing conservation programs and calls for action in a variety of areas, including improving availability of prey by supporting salmon restoration in the region, reducing pollution and contamination in the Sound, and monitoring the effects of vessel traffic and underwater noise.

Ongoing research programs, conducted by NOAA Fisheries and others, are providing important information that will help implement and update the plan.

Killer whales, which are actually the world’s largest variety of dolphin, are found in every ocean. Males, generally larger than females, can reach close to 30 feet at maturity and weigh more than 15,000 pounds.

The agency said recovery of the Southern Resident killer whales requires cooperation from West Coast communities from California to British Columbia. The plan was developed with help from a variety of stakeholders, including federal and state agencies, tribes, non-profit groups, industries, the academic community and concerned citizens. Development of this plan was closely coordinated with the state of Washington and the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

See the Web to view the plan and related documents

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department, is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and information service delivery for transportation, and by providing environmental stewardship of our nation’s coastal and marine resources. Through the emerging Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), NOAA is working with its federal partners, more than 70 countries and the European Commission to develop a global monitoring network that is as integrated as the planet it observes, predicts and protects.

Tags:   california brishis columbia · dolphin · engangered species · fisheries service · killer whales · noaa · orca · orcas · population decline · recovery · saving puget sound · sourthern residents · west coast1 Comment

I have been working on multiple blogs today and trying to improve things on each of them and in the process I broke this blog for a while :(. I have it functional again…yay and I have some reall cool things I am going to be working on here in the next couple of days.

There are some really exciting developments for the people who have wanted Lolita to come home for so long…I can’t wait….so stay tuned!

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Wow! Things are starting to happen…and it’s so exciting. The article in Grist got picked up by MSNBC and things are starting to move. Momentum to bring Lolita home is picking up. I wanted to paste a couple of paragrahs here just to give you a taste:

“Taken from her family while still a juvenile, Lolita has been performing for sunburnt tourists twice a day over the last 37 years. The tank she lives in is just four times her size at its widest; she’d have to circle it more than 600 times to travel the same distance her still-wild family members might in an average day. Her only companion — another killer whale from her pod, or family group — died 20-some years ago after repeatedly bashing his own head against the enclosure walls. In her native Pacific Northwest waters, whales like Lolita have lifespans similar to humans; in a tank, that life expectancy is cut in half.”

and then Raul Julia-Levy is quoted here as saying: “The conditions that she lives in are barbaric,” Julia-Levy shouts to me over the phone, unable to contain his anger. He decided to get involved in the campaign to free Lolita last year, when he learned that it was in need of star power. But as spokesperson for the glittery troops he’s amassed, Julia-Levy — the son of actor Raul Julia — emphasizes that he and the other Lolita-loving producers and celebrities are involved as regular citizens, not activists.

“We are people who have consciences,” he says, “and everyone in this campaign from Hollywood has a mind of their own, and we believe that what we’re doing is the right thing simply because animals should live in their normal habitat.”

I had the chance briefly to speak with Raul today. He was fired up! Many more celebrities and producers are joining the effort to free Lolita. There are some very exciting things in the works to draw attention to Lolita and the call to bring her home. Raul’s passion has really made a difference in this whole campaign and it’s amazing what one person can accomplish when they put their mind to it. With so many Hollywood movers and shakers supporting Lolita, it seems like the winds of change are blowing Lolita’s way for the first time since 1970.

Keep up the great work you are doing Raul and thank you to all of the supporters who are making a difference for this amazing creature they call Lolita.

Check out the entire article here Lolita on MSNBC 

Tags:   actor · article · celebrities · family · free lolita · grist · grist magazine · hollywood · Lolita · Lolita the Whale · msnbc · orca · producers · raul · Raul Julia-Levy · whaleNo Comments.

In a previous post I’d put two videos in, one showing captive orcas and one showing free orcas. While I was surfing around today I found this video that I think really shows the maddness of keeping these animals in fish tanks and training them to perform.

I wish I could adequately put into words how I feel when I watch animals trained for human amusement. I remember the last time I went to the circus many years ago…I’d always loved the circus before, but this time it just gave me an overwhelming feeling of saddness and revulsion. I feel the same thing when I watch orcas, majestic and beautiful, turned into ATMs for their captures and novelty items for the public.

I believe humans are not just overlords of this planet but keepers of it. We reshape the land, invent and innovate. We are amazing in our capacity to create and dream and manifest. It just boggles my mind that we haven’t managed to find a way to do that which is more symboitic. Instead we seem compelled to consume everything in our path…a great maw, swallowing the world and everything on it.

I know a lot of people like to argue about things like global warming or whether one humanitarian cause is better than another. But I think the real issue is about what kind of world we want to live in. We are the makers of this world, and we choose how it’s going to be. Some people will say that God is the Creator, but even still, God isn’t driving a new car or living in a hut somewhere, we are. We make choices that shape our world, our reality.

The question is, what do you want your reality to look like? Do you want world peace, do you want a safe town, do you want clean air, do you want creatures in your midst? We can continue to behave as though our actions as individuals have no consquences in the larger scheme of things or we can recognize that each of us is an organism in an ecosystem which, if it becomes too unbalanced, will not be condusive to sustaining us, or any of the other life on this planet that requires an environment similar to ours…that is with oxygen and water.  It’s like that saying, “if you choose not to choose you have still chosen.”

So, what shall we choose?

Tags:   animal cruelty · animal rights · ecology · envirionment · free lolita · freedom · human condition · Lolita the Whale · orca · orcas · rant · save the whales · thoughts on the world1 Comment

So in my persuit of “showing” intelligence, I found this:

These amazing family oriented animals are intelligent and have self awareness. Each pod has it’s own culture and teaches it to their young. Each pod has it’s own language. So imagine yourself…aware, conscious, knowing the language of your family and the culture you have learned and being held in a small cage and trained to do tricks for people to watch for the price of a ticket. And then, to be left utterly alone, no one like you around, no one who speaks your language or who looks like you. No one who can hear what you want to say to them. That’s Lolita’s life.

And her family is here, in the NW, well documented and studied…they would remember her, and know her call…and for the first time since 1970 there would be someone who could speak to Lolita in her own language. Her family. It’s time to bring Lolita home.

Tags:   animal abuse · animal intelligence · animal rights · bring lolita home · Lolita the Whale · Miami Seaquarium · orca · orca intelligenceNo Comments.

So one of the things I hope to show with this blog is that Lolita is a really good candidate for being returned home and that just on the basis of their intellect along, whales and dolphins shouldn’t be kept in captivity. They are social and intelligent. They are intelligent enough to make their captivity criminal. So I started to do some research, and I am going to continue to research. But the abstracts go on and on about the scientific method of the subject in question blahblahblah. So, first off Bottle Nosed Dolphins and Orcas belong to the same “family”, orcas are the largest of the delphinids, the dolphin family. Second, being a visual person I decided to find some video to make my case. Now if you are interested I’ll include links to the case studies at the end of this post, but I do think a picture is worth a thousand words. So enjoy this video that highlights how self aware these animals really are.

Case study: http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/98/10/5937.pdf

They also have a highly developed sense of community and culture as indicated in this research study: http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Rendell/ 

And another smart dolphin video:

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Tags:   animal cruelty · bottle nosed dolphins · conservation · delphinids · dolphin video · free lolita · Lolita the Whale · orca intelligence · save orcas18 Comments

A friend of mine sent me the link to the article Grist Magazine did on Raul’s passionate crusade for Lolita. It’s a wonderful article and the link is at the end of this post.

I wanted to know more about the effort to free Lolita so I spoke with Howard Garrett, who has been working to Free Lolita since 1995. According to Howard, the campaign to free her actually started over a decade ago when an Orca researcher named Ken Balcomb made an annoucement to the press, along with the then Governer of Washington Mike Lowery, that it was time to bring Lolita home. She was captured in Washington waters in 1970, and it was time to return her here. Ken had spent a lot of time and energy researching how to successfully bring a whale back to it’s native waters from captivity during the time when everyone wanted to free Keiko.

Ken’s brother, Howard Garrett, saw immediately there was a need for organization around this effort so he and his brother began working together to bring Lolita home. Ken and Howard had worked together before on Ken’s Center for Whale Research. Howard helped to sort of “run” things in the early days of the center, while Ken did the research. That’s what happened with the Lolita campaign, one expert and one organizer.

At that time they were very successful in raising awareness about the plight of Lolita. There were gatherings, and marches, and artists writing songs and making art and a lot of press. Howard even spent a couple of years in the late 90’s in Miami, raising awareness there because people didn’t realize the story behind Lolita’s capture or that she still had family in her native Washington waters.

There was a lot of interest in those early days, but ultimately nothing ever came of it. My understanding is that Arthur Hertz, the owner of the Seaquarium, loved his whale and took great care of her, and really didn’t see what the fuss was all about, so a conversation between the group in Seattle and the Seaquarium in Miami never came together.

Ultimately, this effort sort of died on the vine. Howard is now part of a group called The Orca Network and Ken is still running the Center for Whale Research.

Then enters Raul Julia-Levy actor, producer and animal activist. Raul is a passionate animal activist and one day he called up Howard and told him he’d heard about this whale Lolita and the efforts to bring her home and he wanted to help. Before long Raul had managed to assembled a virtual A-List of Hollywood stars and producers to champion this cause.

It’s amazing what Raul has done for this animal, I really do believe that he’s her last chance. If you have words of support or encouragement you can add to Raul’s efforts, I think it would be nice to share them. I think when you are in the middle of this kind of campaign or cause, there’s a whirlwind of activity but no one ever stops to say thank you for doing this. So I am saying it now,

Thank you for doing this Raul!

Here’s a link to the article Grist did: http://www.grist.org/feature/2008/04/04/index.html

Tags:   activism · animal rights · ecology · environment · free lolita · Lolita the Whale · miami sea aquarium · Miami Seaquarium · orca · orca network · orca pod · Raul Julia-LevyNo Comments.

I know that people wonder what all the fuss is about a whale. First off I think the world is full of do-gooder types with passions that run the gamut. There are people who are passionate about kids or  helping inner cities or homeless. There are people who rescue pets and others who rescue wildlife. I know a group that goes into any area of the world with a need and does what it can to “fixt the problem”.

My love of whales goes back to when I was young. I grew up in Seattle and every year we used to “walk for whales”. Hunting was going on, Greenpeace was intercepting hunting boats all over the world and we raised money by doing this amazing walk through all of Seattle.

After that I worked and volunteered for both the Woodland Park Zoo and the Seattle Aquarium. I am also a certified diver, although I admit it’s been a while since I dusted off that certification. I recognize and respect the work that people who maintain captive creatures do and the benefit of educating people about creatures and their habitat through good programs at zoos and aquariums.

Lolita is different. From the video, you can see how agonizing and terrifying that capture was. It’s really hard to watch. But to put her in this very small tank and teach her to do tricks, it’s an abomination. Everytime I see her leaping out of the water on command it just breaks my heart. I keep thinking what it must be like for an animal that uses echolocation to communicated to live in a little round tank. It must make her crazy.

So everyone has a cause, a passion. This is mine. I respect that it’s not everyone’s passion, but hope if it’s not yours you come to this topic with an open mind.

Tags:   freedom · greenpeace · Lolita the orca · orca · seattle · seattle aquarium · whale · woodland park zooNo Comments.

The word is out! Earth Island Institute got the press release we posted yesterday and they put it out on the wire. The partnership with EII is really exciting. These people know orcas and will ensure that Lolita’s needs are met every step of the way.

Tags:   captive whale · conservation · environment · environmental · free lolita · Lolita · miami sea aquarium · news · orca · orcas · whale · whalesNo Comments.

This is the Saab car commercial that features Lolita. It’s haunting. 

Tags:   captive orca · car commercial · conservation · ecology · environmentalism · freedom · Lolita · orca · saabNo Comments.