2 June 2023

Dear Pritam Singh, Charles Vinick, Dr. Roger Payne, Dr. Dianna Reiss, and Raynell Morris:

I am inquiring on the orca Tokitae (also known as Lolita and Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut), currently under your care at the Miami Seaquarium, located on Virginia Key in unincorporated Miami-Dade County, Florida, USA.

I have a number of questions and invite you to respond to these in a public forum.

• At your 13 December 2022 “Day of Listening” event, animal welfare advocate Phil Demers and his associates requested that the reports on water quality in Tokitae’s tank be made public. Friends of Toki ensured the group that they would indeed be made public. I have been searching for them and have been unable to find them. Could you please share where these reports can be found for public reading or download?
• Your 13 December 2022 report states: “Estimated 12/10/22 for completion. Already installed new chillers skids onsite to cool incoming ambient seawater to holding reservoir. This new water supply source will aid in balancing Toki’s pool water temperature demand, pH, salinity, alkalinity, and increasing water microbiome diversity. The new system installation has begun adjacent to holding reservoir.” Your 30 April 2023 report states: “One of the two new chillers has come online to help maintain Toki’s water temperature in the preferred range of 55-59° F during the warm summer months, with low levels of oxidants (primarily ozone and only small, supplemental amounts of chlorine). The second chiller will be coming online as soon as two fan motors are delivered.” Can you please explain why it took four months for one of the chillers to come online, with the other one missing parts? Additionally, I have heard reports from multiple sources that a dispute between The Dolphin Company and Friends of Toki over funding of power to the chillers may have kept them offline for a number of weeks. Could you please clarify what happened and who is footing the bill for the chiller power?
• On 14 August 2022, Mr. Vinick shared on Toki TV that the Friends of Toki plan was based on one developed by Howard Garrett of Orca Network, who has fought for decades to repatriate Tokitae to her home waters in Washington state. It’s my understanding that Mr. Garrett has not been invited to Miami to visit with Tokitae and to see firsthand the progress with the project. Can you please explain why?
• The Dolphin Company appears to be undergoing some sort of financial distress. McRoberts Sales Company, Inc. has halted supply of fish to the Miami Seaquarium due to unpaid invoices. Today, Hach placed the Seaquarium into collections due to unpaid invoices. On 17 March 2023, Security Alliance filed a claim in Florida state court for unpaid invoices for services rendered at the Miami Seaquarium. Additionally, there is a 23 May 2023 report of 300 employees from three parks operated by The Dolphin Company in Quinta Roo, Mexico going on strike due to alleged unpaid wages. Do any of these situations pose a risk to the work Friends of Toki is conducting with Tokitae, and is Friends of Tokitae offering its services to assist with husbandry and veterinary needs of other animals at the Miami Seaquarium and at other parks operated by The Dolphin Company at this time?
• Yesterday, Jim Irsay tweeted that Tokitae will be removed from the Whale Bowl by September 2023. Does this have anything to do with the Miami Seaquarium’s request on 19 April 2023 to withdraw its extension of time with the Miami-Dade Unsafe Structures Board on applying for permits for repairs to the Whale Bowl? It’s my understanding that the 120-day leniency period from 19 April would expire on 17 August 2023, at which point the county would issue a 90-day vacate notice prior to mandatory demolition of the structure.

My last few questions are based on the rarely discussed fact that Tokitae has brain damage.

This information comes from highly respected neuroscientist Dr. Lori Marino, a colleague of Mr. Vinick and former research collaborator of Dr. Reiss. I did not contact Dr. Marino prior to posting this letter, as I feel her public testimony speaks for itself.

In a 6 January 2022 interview published in the journal Mètode, a publication of the University of Valencia, Dr. Marino states: “Captive whales also show evidence of brain damage. Behavioral abnormalities such as stereotypies, self-harm, and hyper-aggression, are always indicators of harm to the brain. Stereotypies are highly repetitive behaviors, e.g., circling, banging the body against the sides of the tank, grating the teeth on hard surfaces, etc., that are due to a dysregulation of neural circuits in the brain. We also see anorexia and symptoms of depression, such as inactivity. The inactivity can be floating still on the surface (which is called logging) or even laying on the bottom of the tank or in a corner with their head towards the walls. Finally, captive dolphin social interactions in the tanks are highly abnormal and result in aggression not observed in the wild, poor parenting and attachment, and other social problems that cause trauma. The trauma is passed on intergenerationally.”

This is addressed further in her online interview with KING5 about returning Tokitae to the Salish Sea.

The statement on brain damage begins around the 4:37 mark. During the interview she states: “I infer that when these animals are forced to grow up in an impoverished environment like a marine park that there is damage to their brains.”

A May 2019 paper titled “The Harmful Effects of Captivity and Chronic Stress on the Well-Being of Orcas (Orcinus orca)” in the Journal of Veterinary Behavior, co-written by Dr. Marino, Dr. Naomi Rose, Dr. Ingrid Visser, Dr. Heather Rally, Dr. Hope Ferdwosian, and Dr. Veronica Slootsky discusses the potential impact of captivity on the orca brain. Of note is this passage:

“The confinement of naturally wide-ranging mammals causes chronic stress (Dawkins, 1998) and impairs the development of brain structures involved in sequencing behavior, thus decreasing behavioral flexibility.”

I first reached out to Dr. Marino in 2014. For a number of years, I’ve volunteered with organizations that fight sex trafficking and provide services to women and children who are victims of domestic violence. One of the psychologists I worked with encouraged me to research human child development and the fear response. My research showed that abuse at a young age results in increased fear in children and an increased release of cortisol, causing damage to the synapses that control memory, learning, emotional expression, and other cognitive skills at a point when the brain is still developing.

I asked Dr. Marino if this was also the case with cetaceans. I had read her 2004 paper on the neuroanatomy of the orca and also a 1980 paper it referenced, by PJ Morgane, et al, on the bottlenose brain. The determination was that the cetacean brain is different than the human brain. So could the same thing that happens to human children happen to cetaceans?

At the time, I told Dr. Marino that my correspondence was out of personal interest and I would not publish her response. Nine years later, I’m adhering to that pledge. Suffice to say, it was a very pleasant dialogue with no disagreements.

The brain is a fascinating thing. Brain damage can be reversed. It depends on the extent of the damage to the neurons. Are they simply damaged or have they died? We’ve seen with amputees who learn to substitute other appendages or those with speech cognition issues after brain trauma how the brain, with proper therapy, can come up with creative solutions, even invoking other parts of the brain to substitute for damaged neurons elsewhere. But depending on the extent of the damage, rehabilitation can take years, sometimes even decades.

I’m not a big fan of the human prison – cetacean tank analogy credited to the late Jacques Cousteau, mainly because I’m not enlightened enough to believe in non-human personhood. But I do believe in the welfare and protection of animals and there are strong correlations between human and animal development in many ways (I’ll admit I’m a big fan of the concept of ontogeny recapitulating phylogeny). In honor of Mr. Cousteau, because Mr. Vinick worked for him for many, many years, I’m going to throw this out there.

This Scientific American article seems to parallel much of what Dr. Marino has been preaching for many years.

So my final few questions are:

• How are you assessing the damage to her brain from decades in that tank?
• What therapies are you applying to reverse the damage or to train other parts of the brain to substitute for the damaged areas?
• How will you accommodate her needs in the sea pen while she undergoes the therapy?

I look forward to your response.

Thank you and best regards,

Joe Kleiman