News & Current Events

Footage Of Trapped Orcas In Closed Marine Park Sparks Outrage Worldwide

Published on May 18, 2025

At a closed marine park in France, two orcas are among the creatures still imprisoned in an enclosure.

Months after closing, the killer whales at Marineland Antibes, an aquatic zoo in southeast France, have been seen floating around aimlessly in heartbreaking video.

Although the French government rejected a prior proposal earlier this year for ecological grounds, Canada’s The Whale Sanctuary Project has offered to accept the orcas, who were both born in captivity, while French authorities are frantically attempting to find new homes for them.

The group’s president, Lori Marino, asserted that for Wikie, 23, and her son Keijo, 11, their location in Nova Scotia, on Canada’s east coast, is “the only option left.”

Agnès Pannier-Runacher, the French minister of ecology, has expressed her desire to find a new home for the mother and son in a European sanctuary.

Zoos from all over the world have notified the French government that they would be delighted to adopt Wikie and Keijo, but animal rights organisations are demanding that the two be placed in a whale sanctuary where they would have more room to swim and not be pressured to reproduce or perform.

“If you don’t even have a site, you’re years away from being a viable sanctuary,” Marino said, per the BBC, adding that The Whale Sanctuary Project had carried out water surveys, environmental studies and has even been offered a lease by the Canadian government’s department of natural resources to accompany the offer.

While Earth Island Institute’s David Phillips, director of the International Marine Mammal Project at the non-profit California based institute, added on its website: “We have been strong advocates for the past year that these two orcas should be relocated to a seaside sanctuary, which would be larger, in natural sea water, and save them from repetitive performances in concrete tanks.”

“While the French Ministry has stated a preference for a sanctuary in the EU, we believe that the whale sanctuary being developed in Nova Scotia is a very viable alternative that was previously chosen as the best option by the French Ministry’s Inspector General’s Report.”

“Orcas don’t belong in concrete tanks; they belong in the ocean.”