Supporters Want To Free Lolita Campaign Launched To Return Killer Whale To Puget Sound

A bicoastal campaign to free Lolita, the last surviving Puget Sound killer whale in captivity, was launched Thursday by Gov. Mike Lowry and a Florida magazine publisher.

The goal is to “bring Lolita back after 25 years of work in captivity … to retire as a citizen of Washington state,” Lowry said at a news conference held on a bluff overlooking Puget Sound, where Lolita was captured in 1970.

At about the same time in Miami, Ocean Drive magazine publisher Jerry Powers announced plans to lease billboards and 100 bus benches in the Miami area, stepping up his call for Lolita’s release and a boycott of the marine park that holds her.

The whale, star performer at the Seaquarium tourist attraction in Miami, is not for sale. And scientists differ as to whether she would survive a return to the wild or be welcomed back by her family after 25 years in captivity.

In Miami, Seaquarium officials scoffed at the “‘interested outsiders’ who think they know best.”

“Lolita is not, and never will be, for sale at any price. Any funds collected for the purpose of purchasing Lolita would be collected under false pretenses,” said a news release from the marine park, which gets about 650,000 visitors a year.

Lowry said he is convinced state officials and scientists can persuade the marine park and Florida officials that returning her is “the right thing to do.”

He said his office has been discussing the matter with the administration of Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles, and Washington’s Secretary of State, Ralph Munro, said backers of the release effort have been in daily contact with the Seaquarium.

Lolita is the last survivor of about 57 killer whales, or orcas, captured in Puget Sound in the late 1960s and early ‘70s and sold to marine parks and aquariums. The state barred such captures in the mid-1970s.

She is now in her early 30s, an advanced age for a captive whale although scientists believe wild ones can live as long as 80 years.

A fund-raising campaign set up by the Center for Whale Research in the San Juan Islands has set a goal of $2 million to bring Lolita home. The center is working with Miami supporters to ease the financial impact on the Seaquarium - perhaps through exclusive rights to film of her homecoming.

But regardless of the outcome of that effort, scientists at the center, which studies Puget Sound’s three killer-whale pods, hope to link Lolita with her family using satellite communications.

If her freedom is won, that link could be the first step in reuniting her with her family group, said center director Ken Balcomb.