LETTER TO THE EDITOR | Lolita can, should be set free in Puget Sound

Published 10:14 am Wednesday, March 12, 2014

Editor,

Thanks for your thoughtful piece about orcas in the wild and in tanks, “Freedom for Lolita?” which ran in the March 1 edition of The Record.

Lolita was ripped from her mother, her family and her home when she was just a baby and has spent more than 40 years in a cramped concrete tank in the Miami Seaquarium. Who with a shred of human decency would deny this intelligent and aware animal a comfortable retirement?

There are many orca experts ready and waiting to help transition Lolita successfully into a protected sea pen, which would allow her greater freedom of movement; the ability to see, sense, and communicate with her wild cousins and other ocean animals as well as to feel the tides and waves; and opportunities to engage in the behaviors that she’s long been denied.

Lolita could spend her final years off-display with some degree of autonomy and self-determination. Doesn’t she deserve some measure of what she’s been denied her entire life?

Lolita has served the Seaquarium’s interests for four decades: Let her go.

JENNIFER O’CONNOR

staff writer

PETA Foundation