Morgan and Keiko I have a special connection to the case of Morgan, a five year-old female orca found in 2010, underweight and separated from her pod in waters off her native Netherlands. With a special permit requiring her return to the wild once healthy again, she was captured and held at the country’s Dolphinarium Harderwijk. But in 2011 Dutch authorities facilitated transfer of Morgan to Loro Parque, a Spanish marine park, despite her regained health. Orca specialist Dr. Ingrid Visser and I, along with many others, have been vigilant in our legal fight in Amsterdam court for the release of Morgan back into the wild. Despite our best efforts, Morgan remains captive in Loro Parque, though she remains a perfect candidate for release. Experts have been able to match Morgan’s vocalizations to a pod in Norway, which greatly increases the chances of reuniting her with family. We cannot give up on Morgan. We have to give her a chance at freedom. Through my involvement with the Free Morgan Foundation, I will continue to lend a voice and support to get her out of jail. For four and a half years, I was directly involved with the release of Keiko,
the male orca made famous in the film Free Willy. Public outrage at his continued captivity and poor health resulted in a movement to rehabilitate and free him. Millions of dollars in private donations made that possible in an unprecedented experiment with scientists, animal husbandry experts and my team and others. Like many of the orcas now in captivity, Keiko was captured at a young
age. The belief was that if we could identify and find his natal pod, we could release him and he would be accepted back into the wild in the company of other orcas. That never happened. After years of training, at great expense, Keiko was finally able to catch and eat live fish and was returned to the waters in Iceland near where he was captured. He never integrated with the wild whales he encountered. He often swam back to the boat for protection and waited at the gate of his enclosure to be let back in. Keiko finally left his constant human caregivers and swam over 1,000
miles (1,600km), feeding himself, from Iceland to Norway, where he entered a fjord and stayed, dependent again on human attention, until his death by a pneumonia-like disease in December of 2003. If we know the location and pods from which individuals were captured,
every effort should be made to create a safe enclosure for them there and to observe whether they are recognized and possibly accepted by the orcas associated with the pod when they were captured. Such proposals have been made for Corky and Lolita and are possibly worth considering. I think there would be tremendous public support for a humane, experimental program of this kind if comments from our Ocean Futures Society members are an indication. However one sees it, we are responsible for the care and well being of
all orcas so long as we hold them captive and especially if they’re born into captivity. My dream is for the capture of any orca to be illegal. Period. Reproduction
among captive orcas would be prevented so this population would die out in time. There would be no shows, no entertainment, only activities to keep
Morgan in her small tank at Loro Parque in Spain
Jean-Michel Cousteau in New Zealand assists with a successful orca rescue, led by Dr. Ingrid Visser
these orcas active until their ‘premature’ deaths, as the record shows for all captive orcas. A sad chapter in the history of our treatment of this sentient, intelligent, complex animal would finally close with the recognition that captivity of these animals has brought us to a more enlightened place. My dream would also be that we honor the lives of
these captive orcas by assembling an international group of top scientists, animal cognition and behavior experts and human psychologists. That they devise humane studies to understand as best we can the intelligence and mental capacity of this alien intelligence that we ask to jump and perform for our amusement. It is a tragedy of untold magnitude. With focused effort we might explore frontiers we
barely even dare to dream about — confirmation of another thinking, intelligent being with whom we share the planet. Admittedly, it’s a dream but how can we live with ourselves if we don’t try? Let’s advance 3D technology or, as my father dreamt, holographic technology to observe the wild orca, our marine world counterpart, and use this imagery to instill wonder. A dynamic animal as social and intelligent as the orca
deserves to roam freely in its ocean world. Who are we to imprison them for our entertainment? The time has come to regard whale and dolphin captivity as history, and no part of the future. To that end captive whales that can be returned to the wild should be released. In all cases, these awe-inspiring creatures should be allowed a more dignified life than that of marine park holding tanks.
For more info visit:
www.freemorgan.org
www.divermag.com
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Photo: Dr. Ingrid Visser,
freemorgan.org
Photo: Matthew Ferraro, Ocean Futures Society
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