After the tragic loss of the beloved orca, Tokitae, which caused debates regarding the disposal of her body, Tokitae is set to return home to the Salish Sea for her burial. Following a lifetime spent in the Miami Seaquarium, Tokitae’s ashes will soon return home after more than 50 years since her capture in August of 1970.
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A wooden orca figure to commemorate Tokitea’s life.
After being taken to the University of Georgia for her necropsy, Tokitae’s body was cremated and then sent back to Washington with the escort of Lummi nation officials. Her ashes will be spread in a private ceremony off the coast of Whidbey Island.
A Southern Resident Orca, born into the L pod, she was meant to roam the coastal waters of the Pacific Northwest for the remainder of her life. However on Aug. 8, 1970, Tokitae, along with roughly 80 other Orcas were rounded up off of Whidbey Island. In what became known as the Penn Cove Capture, seven orcas were ultimately captured and taken to various marine amusement parks throughout the United States. Within five years, all of the captured orcas except Tokitae had died in captivity.
Tokitae was flown across the country, to the Miami Seaquarium. As opposed to the open waters she was accustomed to, she lived in an 80 ft by 35 ft “whale bowl”, which only reached 20 feet in depth. It was here Tokitae was given the name Lolita. She began to perform for the seaquarium shortly after, and continued to do so until 2021.
For her first ten years of captivity Tokitae was accompanied by Hugo, another orca who had been captured in the Puget Sound just two years before Tokitae’s capture. In 1980, Hugo died due to a cerebral aneurysm, after repeatedly slamming his head into walls of their shared pool. Since his passing she had no other orca tankmates.
In 2021, the US Department of Agriculture informed the Dolphin Company who had purchased the seaquarium that year that they must retire Tokitae, after 51 years of performance. The Department of Agriculture also released an inspection report covering the conditions Tokitae had become accustomed to, citing poor quality food, dirty tanks, and complete disregard for veterinary advice regarding Tokitae’s ability to continue performing.
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People placing flowers in front of the facility where Tokitea was in captivity.
These new regulations led to an increase in Tokitae’s health, a report from spring of 2023 stating that Tokitae seemed to be in “good condition.”
In March of 2023, the seaquarium announced an agreement made with Friends of Lolita, an animal rights group dedicated to Tokitae’s cause, stating they were planning to release Tokitae into her home waters and were “working toward and hope the relocation [would] be possible in the next 18 to 24 months.”
They were set to return Tokitae back to a sea pen in the Salish Sea with the assistance of the nonprofit The Whale Sanctuary Project, where she would be cared for by specialized veterinary and animal care staff. Here she would even have the chance to communicate with her pod, who frequent the waters, using the lifelong vocalizations she learned as a juvenile whale. However, before this plan could move forward they would need approval by federal command.
Before approval of her release, Tokitae suddenly died of some form of renal disease, on Aug. 18, 2023, at the age of 57.
The Lummi view Orcas as “family under the waves.” To some the capture of Tokitae mirrored the kidnapping of their own children. “When they came in the roundup in the 1970s and took her, that is exactly what they did to the Lhaq’temish children, by rounding them up and taking them to Indian resident boarding schools,” Raynelle Morris stated in an interview with King 5 News. Tokitae, or as the Lummi call her Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut, arrived in Bellingham on Sept. 20, where her ashes wait to be spread in a private traditional Lummi ceremony.
A public ceremony is in the works but a date has not yet been announced, “Sk’aliCh’elh-tenaut will be honored with a public celebration of life at a date to be announced later,” Lummi Nation officials state.
There are 74 southern resident orcas still living. There is only one remaining orca in the L pod from the ’70s, L25, more commonly known as Ocean Sun. She is the oldest living Southern Resident Orca, she is also suspected to be Tokitae’s mother. Southern Resident Orcas are listed as critically endangered animals on the U.S. endangered species act, facing problems such as “vessel traffic noise and disturbance, health and contaminants, and prey availability.”
Tokitae was the last of the Southern Resident Orcas living in captivity, her death marks the bittersweet end of captive orcas from the Puget Sound.