The final and most important phase of the retirement of orca Lolita

The Third Phase

The third phase of Lolita's retirement plan is the procedure for her potential reintroduction to L pod, her family. This would begin after she successfully completes 1-2 months of boat-follow exercises. At this point, her health and stamina will be judged to see if how she compares with the other resident orcas.

Read "The final and most important phase of the retirement of orca Lolita"

Google and Examiner.com

Google is no longer picking up my articles on Examiner.com. I am upset as I know a lot of people were following them on there. I will post the links on here from now on. If you add this blog to your favorites, the new links will show when I publish.

Puget Sound Marine Life Examiner

The retirement plan for an orca named Lolita - Phase Two

Photo ©Peter Pijpelink

Phase Two

Lolita will be given all the time she needs to become accustomed to her new seapen, surroundings, and staff. When she displays no abnormal stress and exhibits normal physical parameters, rehabilitation will begin.

The team will be partly following the steps put forth in Project Deep Ops: Deep Object Recovery with Pilot and Killer Whales, NUC TP 306 by C.A. Bowers and R.S. Henderson. In this study, two orca were kept in seapens in Hawaii while being trained to follow boats more than ten nautical miles and dive hundreds of feet deep. This is called boat-recall training.

To read the entire article, go to "The retirement plan for an orca named Lolita - Phase Two".

An Orca Named Lolita - The Plan for her Retirement - Part 1

Monday marked Lolita's 39 years in captivity at the Miami Seaquarium. There has been an ongoing campaign to let Lolita retire. A number of people have contacted me to voice their opposition to this thinking that we plan to just release her back into the wild. This is not the case. I have also received a number of emails about Keiko. For the differences in the two cases, please read, "Keiko and Lolita: Same or Different".


For more on the retirement plan for Lolita, go to: "An Orca Named Lolita - The Plan for her Retirement - Part 1"

An Orca named Lolita - Where it all started

The year was 1964. The World’s Fair was being held in New York City, the Olympics were in Tokyo, and the US was watching "Flipper" and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" on the TV. At the same time, the Vancouver Aquarium in Canada decided that they wanted a sculpture of an orca.

Read complete article here

How you can help Lolita - Worldwide event - September 13th

This is a worldwide event!

Anyone from around the world can help! You do not need to live in Florida to help Lolita, anymore than you need to live in Taiji to help the dolphins! This event is scheduled for Sunday, September 13, 2009. We are asking people to call, fax, email, or snail mail the Miami Seaquarium and tell them it is time for her to retire! September 14th marks 39 years Lolita has been at Seaquarium. She has well earned her retirement!

Ways you can help 

Click here for how you can help!