In late 2021, I gave up blogging. I had been recruited by a non-profit organization (not the Whale Sanctuary Project) to devise and help implement a plan to acquire Kiska, Canada’s last remaining killer whale. This past March, Kiska died. Some of the consultants I had brought into the project expressed concern about Tokitae, the lone killer whale at the Miami Seaquarium, and the fact that her tank had delipidated significantly since the last Force 3 or higher hurricane in 2017, with hurricane season around the corner. The goal was – and still is – simple. Get her out of the tank to protect her from potential risk. Where she went – a newly constructed temporary tank, another park, a sea pen in the Pacific Northwest, did not matter. Her safety was of upmost importance to us.
I don’t fly drones over parks or ask others to. I’m not that guy. I have been working behind-the-scenes with Valerie Greene, a former SeaWorld Senior Trainer, who is also a lawyer, underwater cinematographer Flip Thompson (who has started his own social media campaign – The Flip), and a number of experts in animal welfare and law. We have been aided by half-a-dozen student volunteers, activists and current and former trainers acting under grounds of anonymity. After a three month search, we discovered the Miami-Dade County Unsafe Structures Board case files for three of the four animal stadiums at the Seaquarium. We also discovered significant documentation as to the condition (in drastic need of repair, according to USDA) of the Whale Bowl tank through FOIA requests with government agencies. A small number of those documents have been shared on this blog and its Facebook page and we have thousands of other pages acquired through FOIA to share in the near future.
Beyond the blogging, the FOIA requests, the court record inspections, we have been in contact and in discussion with politicians, government leaders, agencies, and top members of the national and international media. All this has been a bit under the radar. But now, we present three letters that got the ball rolling, a behind-the-scenes look at our advocacy efforts. All three letters were sent prior to receipt of our first FOIA request, but the documents we received only validate the concerns we express.
The Congressional Letter
Sent on May 8 and May 9 to Congresswoman DelBene of Washington state and the eight other signatories of the July 2022 letter to USDA and NOAA regarding the exemption of the Whale Bowl from the Miami Seaquarium’s exhibitor license. The letter was also sent to an additional ten members of Congress with strong animal welfare legislation background and five members of the Senate.
May 8, 2023
Dear Congresswoman DelBene-
We are Valerie Greene, a lawyer and former killer whale trainer at SeaWorld Orlando, and Joe Kleiman, a trade journalist covering the attractions industry with extensive experience working with animals in zoos, marine life parks, and marine mammal rescue facilities. We are writing on behalf of a killer whale named Lolita (also known as Tokitae or Toki), who has been in captivity at the Miami Seaquarium for more than 50 years. There have been multiple USDA reports documenting starvation and animal cruelty at the Miami Seaquarium, involving Lolita and numerous other animals housed there.
In March of 2023, The Dolphin Company, which owns Miami Seaquarium, along with its non-profit partner Friends of Toki, proposed a plan to move Lolita back to her home waters in Washington State over the next 6-9 months, a proposed effort financed by Jim Irsay, billionaire owner of the Indianapolis Colts. Currently none of the necessary permit applications have been obtained by the appropriate government agencies to complete a move like this. The permitting process can be lengthy—the most recent NOAA Fisheries decision on Lolita took two years from date of petition to final decision—and Lolita needs to be removed from her current location as soon as possible.
At 58 years old, Lolita is one of the oldest killer whales in captivity and she battles chronic illness. The stadium that surrounds Lolita’s tank is crumbling and has been condemned by the county. Hurricane season is less than a month away, and the facility is rapidly decaying. The condition of the tank combined with her health has created an emergency animal welfare situation and we urge you to intervene on her behalf.
As animal care professionals with over a decade of experience with marine mammals, we’re very concerned about Lolita’s welfare. No animal should be subjected to this level of cruelty. It’s critical for her health and safety that she be rehabilitated in an intermediate tank prior to being placed in an ocean environment. A cleaner and safer tank would greatly reduce the stress she’d experience before a sea pen relocation and allow for feasible medical intervention if needed. There are three existing tanks in the United States which meet the criteria for housing Lolita, or a new tank could be built to serve the purpose, however we are running out of time.
We would like to work with you to find effective solutions to either get Lolita to another facility in the United States, or fast track a new tank. Time is of the essence. Please don’t let her die this way.
Thank you for your time and consideration,
Valerie Greene
Joe Kleiman
The Irsay Letter
While we often mention SeaWorld as the easiest, closest, and most accessible location for Tokitae to weather out a storm (no pun intended), it has never been our preferred solution. On May 1 2023, we presented this outline, which would maintain control with the current parties, to Jim Irsay. On May 9 2023, we received confirmation from Irsay’s party that the letter hand been handed over to Charles Vinick and Pritam Singh of Friends of Toki. Friends of Toki has since opted to go with a much more less expensive solution – keeping her in the Whale Bowl during a hurricane.
Lolita Success Plan
1) Get her out of her current pool ASAP and into the new “Irsay Family Whale and Dolphin Rescue and Rehabilitation Center.” This would ideally be a tank at least double the size of her current environment, equipped with a medical pool with a false bottom floor that could be raised for medical procedures or in the event she needs immediate intervention. Lolita’s current pool lacks this safety measure, and if she needs medical attention, the water must be dropped, which is incredibly stressful for her. A move straight to a sea pen with her health issues leaves few options for medical intervention should she require it.
· A new pool will be a massive improvement for the immediate welfare of Lolita and the Pacific white-sided dolphins. A move to a new pool, close by in Florida, should NOT require any federal permits from NOAA under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act, as it would not involve interstate travel, nor should it require a USDA license if she’s not being publicly exhibited or used for research.
· There would be a life support system, temporary structures for a lab, offices, fish preparation kitchen and security.
· A retractable shade structure would be installed over her pool to provide shelter from the sun and act as a barrier for drones/helicopter surveillance.
· This could be fast tracked in 3-4 months.
· A new pool is ESSENTIAL to the success of any potential sea pen move.
· It is standard procedure for an animal like Lolita to go to an intermediary facility/pool prior to a sea pen to make sure she is stabilized.
· The initial 4-6 weeks after any kind of move is critical. Because she has been in the same pool for more than 50 years, a move straight to a sea pen is extremely risky without a larger intermediary facility in which to physically and mentally prepare her. In football terms, it’s like having a variable strategy where you can run or pass strategically and incrementally, getting the ball within passing or kicking distance of the endzone, rather than committing to a Hail Mary.
· A new pool would greatly reduce the stress she’d experience before a sea pen relocation and allow for feasible medical intervention if needed.
· The pool can be designed as a temporary structure or it can carry on as a facility for rescue and rehabilitation of whales and dolphins from the wild and from captivity in inadequate facilities.
· If Lolita doesn’t survive the transport to the new pool–it won’t be for nothing. We will have saved her from the enormous amount of stress she’d endure from a cross-country move, and Jim’s enormous generosity and love would live on in her memory.
2) Bring in a small group of long-time trainers. Lolita’s current trainers are the second string, let’s bring in the game openers! We want to make sure her transition is SUCCESSFUL—let’s bring in the trainers who know her best who also have experience with the Pacific white-sided dolphins. This is another measure of abating stress—bring back the people who she loves and knows best.
There are plays we can make as a team to ensure a touchdown for Lolita’s future welfare. The new pool should be part of the game plan we can use to make sure Lolita wins the game!
Hope you enjoyed the football analogies! Thank you so much for your time and consideration. Hope to hear from you soon!
The Hill Letter
The Hill Letter, a hyperlinked document, was distributed in May and June to members of Congress, federal agency staff, members of the United Nations, and a select group of renowned national and international journalists.
We are Valerie Greene, JD, a former SeaWorld Senior Trainer, Dr. Jenna Wallace, former Assistant Attending Veterinarian at the Miami Seaquarium and key witness in the 2021-2022 USDA inspection, and Joseph Kleiman, a trade journalist covering zoo and aquarium design and operations. Together, we have more than thirty years experience working with animals in zoos, aquariums, veterinary hospitals, and wildlife rescue facilities. Fate brought us together through our common concern for a single captive whale.
In the heat and humidity of Miami, Florida, an orca from the waters of Washington state has lived alone without another of her kind for more than forty years. Tokitae, also known by the stage name Lolita, has remained in that tank with only dolphin companions since 1980. The tank is the smallest in the world housing a killer whale, at 80 feet by 35 feet, with a huge concrete barrier that rises from the bottom of the tank splitting the pool into two separate areas. The depth of the tank is only 20 feet. Tokitae is 22 feet long.
In 2015, NOAA added her, under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), to the listing of the Southern Resident Killer Whale population from which she was taken. But last year, in an unprecedented move, the USDA issued a license to the new owners of Miami Seaquarium that excluded the structure housing this orca from the park’s license. As a result, she is barely under government oversight today.
This perplexing action was approved by senior USDA management even though just nine months earlier, in September 2021, the USDA issued a scathing 17-page report documenting numerous violations of the Animal Welfare Act (AWA), including feeding rotten fish to Tokitae, poor water quality and staff disregarding veterinary advice.
Despite Tokitae not being under the USDA’s supervision, the new owners of the park continued to receive citations from the federal government. A September 2022 USDA report, referred to as “disturbing” by the county, reported multiple instances of dolphin aggression on both trainers and visitors due to food deprivation, among other things.
Higher up the government food chain, Animal Care Deputy Administrator Betty Goldentyer was subpoenaed in 2022 by a federal grand jury investigating lab animal breeder Envigo. The Department of Justice seized 4,000 beagles after the USDA repeatedly documented mistreatment but failed to act. Goldentyer retired in April 2023.
This is the same Betty Goldentyer that in 2012 stated that Tokitae’s tank met AWA standards and that the grandstand’s roof provided appropriate shade for the tank, a claim contradicted by the 2021 USDA inspection. For decades, USDA has selectively disregarded the fact that Tokitae’s tank does not meet the federally mandated minimum size requirements for a killer whale. Dr. Wallace alerted DOJ investigators in the Envigo case that Tokitae, under the USDA and Goldentyr, lost primary federal protections when a license was granted to new owner The Dolphin Company that did not include the orca.
The tank has long been a point of contention. Miami-Dade County Commissioner Raquel Regalado told NBC News in February 2022, weeks before the transfer of ownership, that “She [Tokitae] has pneumonia. She is getting better, but she has been very sick and she’s an older whale, we’ve known that the tank is small and there’s [been] a lot of issues for some time …”
Now, the entire stadium surrounding her is a risk factor for both Tokitae and her caretakers. Within an 18-month period, the Miami-Dade Board of Unsafe Structures went from allowing the stands to be filled with park guests to limiting occupancy of the structure to only 10 people.
Miami-Dade politicians have partnered with The Dolphin Company and the non-profit Friends of Toki to repatriate the orca to her home waters in Washington state. The project is being financed by Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay. The timeline given in March 2023 was eighteen to twenty-four months. This poses a problem. Hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30, which places Tokitae in her tank for two whole hurricane seasons.
The conditions of the stadium are worse now than when the last hurricane hit the park. The building has been allowed to deteriorate for the past few years to the point where a chain link fence circles the tank. Per the park’s attorney, repairs to any part of the structure would be disruptive to Tokitae.
The partnership is committed to moving Tokitae directly to a sea pen in Washington. That decision will be up to federal regulators, and it will be a lengthy process. In Canada, where the non-profit Whale Sanctuary Project (WSP) has been developing a sanctuary, conversations between its Executive Director, Charles Vinick, and government agencies have been ongoing for more than three years. A Canadian orca named Kiska that WSP proposed be donated for its sanctuary died earlier this year without construction even having commenced.
Vinick is also co-founder and board member of Friends of Toki, tasked with Tokitae’s move. Yet, more than a year after the organization began caring for her, she remains in a crumbling tank surrounded by a crumbling structure with no hurricane evacuation plan in place.
Time is running out. Hurricane season is upon us and for her safety and that of her caretakers, Tokitae must be removed to another tank, with a medical pool with a lift and scale, where she can continue her treatment and training in preparation for the next step in her life.
The easiest thing to do would be to move her to an existing theme park tank. However, we have sent a simplified outline to Jim Irsay on what’s needed to build a standalone tank, independent of any park, where she can continue her regimen. Our outline was shared with the co-founders of Friends of Toki. They are aware.
A different tank is imperative for the safety of Tokitae and her caretakers. Once safe, then the powers that be can decide the next move.
But tick tock, storm clouds are forming.
Valerie Greene, JD; Jenna Wallace, DVM; Joseph Kleiman
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