Transfer of orcas from defunct French marine park approved by French government
NICE, France––Two orca whales stranded at the former Marineland of Antibes marine mammal park on the French Riviera near Nice, France, are to be transferred to the Whale Sanctuary Project in development in Nova Scotia, Canada, French cabinet minister for ecological transition Mathieu Lefèvre told the French newspaper Nice-Matin on December 13, 2025.
Opened in 1970, Marineland of Antibes closed permanently on January 5th, 2025, with no clear plan for the disposition of the 4,000 resident animals, including the two orcas and 12 bottlenose dolphins.
Wikie & Keijo can buy tickets
Most of the smaller animals have now been relocated, but Wikie, a 23-year-old orca mother, her 11-year-old son Keijo, and the dolphins remain on site.
A 2021 French law forbidding marine mammal exhibition requires that the orcas and dolphins be gone by December 2026.
“The Ministry for Ecological Transition is today taking a decisive new step regarding the future of the animals at Marineland,” Lefèvre announced in a media release accompanying his statements to Nice-Matin, the name of which means ‘Nice Afternoon,’ in order to guarantee their well-being, safety, and compliance with French law.
“After several months of technical analyses, inspections, and discussions with experts,” Lefèvre said, “The two orcas from the park are slated to join the Whale Sanctuary Project,” at an as yet unspecified date apparently contingent on completion of construction begun in October 2025––and upon the Whale Sanctuary Project raising the estimated $15 million that finishing the planned work will take, over and above what has already been raised and spent.
Transfer to Loro Parque rejected
Rumor long suggested that the two orcas would instead be sent to the Loro Parque marine mammal facility in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. Loro Parque already has four orcas, including a calf born in March 2025.
However, “The Spanish scientific authority has already refused the transfer of the orcas to Loro Parque,” Lefèvre continued, “and furthermore, it would be unacceptable for these animals to be exploited for entertainment purposes.
In 2024, the newspaper La Nouvelle Republique and Agence France Presse reported, the French government “refused to allow the cetaceans to leave for a park in Japan.”
Said Lefèvre, “The sanctuary solution is therefore currently the most credible, the most ethical, and the only one that meets the requirements for safety and animal welfare.”
Lefèvre suggested that “The transfer could take place in the summer of 2026.”
But the transfer to Nova Scotia is opposed by the Marineland of Antibes management, Camille Bedara of Riviera Radio reported on December 18, 2025, who are instead “calling for the immediate transfer of the orcas and the park’s remaining dolphins to European facilities,” Bedard said.
Dolphins going to Beauval Zoo/Safari Park
“The dolphins at Marineland are also not intended to be transferred to Spain,” Lefèvre clarified. “This option does not offer sufficient guarantees regarding animal welfare and, there too, exposes the animals to the risk of commercial exploitation, contrary to the spirit of the 2021 law.
“The dolphins will be kept temporarily on site,” Lefèvre said, “in pools deemed suitable for a transitional stay, pending the opening of the future center at the Beauval Zoo/Safari Park.”
The previous French “minister for ecological transition,” Agnès Pannier-Runacher, on September 5, 2025 announced that facilities for the 12 Marineland of Antibes dolphins would be built at the Beauval Zoo/Safari Park de in Loir-et-Cher.
This scheme has been criticized because the dolphins would remain, in effect, on exhibition.
(Beth Clifton collage/Facebook photo)
Whale Sanctuary yet to be built
The Whale Sanctuary Project, promoted since 2015 by University of British Columbia in Vancouver neuroscientist Lori Marino and Animal Welfare Institute marine mammologist Naomi Rose, on October 21, 2025 obtained a lease on 206 acres of “submerged and terrestrial Crown lands, for the purpose of operating and maintaining a seaside sanctuary, including all related infrastructure, for a term of 20 years, with an option to renew for a further 20-year term.”
The Whale Sanctuary Project, said the media release announcing the lease, “now has a clear path to begin construction and to raise the capital funds to complete the sanctuary and welcome the first whales.”
(See Burning urgency to find homes for displaced captive marine mammals.)
Dolphin sanctuaries have no dolphins
The prospects for the San Paolo Dolphin Refuge project, begun in 2017 by Jonian Dolphin Conservation at Taranto, Italy, and two other projected sanctuaries for former performing dolphins at Lipsi and Crete, Greece, are somewhat murkier.
(See Fly five dolphins from tanks in Greece to tanks in Florida? O’Barry says no.)
San Paolo Dolphin Refuge director Carmelo Fanizza told Agence France Presse on December 5, 2025 that “The site will be ready by the end of this month,” with the first dolphins expected to arrive “no later than May or June 2026.”
But where those dolphins might come from is still unclear.
Attica Zoo dolphins going to Clearwater
Taranto, Lipsi, and Crete had all been mentioned as possible destinations for five bottlenose dolphins kept at the Attica Zoo in Greece, whose owners were in January 2025 found guilty of running illegal dolphin exhibits in defiance of a 2012 Greek law.
The convictions came after a multi-year Dolphin Project campaign seeking to close the Attica Zoo dolphinarium.
But the front runner in negotiations to obtain the five dolphins all along was the Clearwater Marine Aquarium in Florida, whose resident dolphin population diminished from nine at peak in 2021 to just five at the beginning of 2025, with attendance and revenue both in a deep dive.
As of December 11, 2025, reported Ceta Base, a Facebook page that tracks the movements of captive dolphins, the U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration “has issued the permit for import of five bottlenose dolphins from the Attica Zoo to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium.
NOAA permit specifies “public display purposes”
“The date of transfer is currently unknown to Ceta Base,” the posting continued.
The NOAA permit specifies that the five captive-born bottlenose dolphins, named Blau, Nuik, Tumay, Lima, and Nojus, are to be imported “for public display purposes. The subject dolphins are all captive-born to individuals with multiple origins,” Ceta Base said, “including the southeastern United States, Cuba, the Russian Federation, and the Black Sea.
“The applicant identified three of the animals as common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and two as Black Sea bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus ponticus). The permit expires on November 30, 2030,” Ceta Base added.
Earlier, Ceta Base announced that the defunct Miami Seaquarium has proposed transferring four rough-toothed dolphins named Doris, Kitana, Dagny, and Wren, plus two bottlenose dolphins, named Star and Squirt, to the Clearwater Aquarium, along with three harbor seals named Ocean, Pharoh, and Scallop.
Parrots & tortoises part of the deal
The Clearwater Aquarium would also receive from the Miami Seaquarium four parrots, including a sulphur-crested cockatoo, a red-and-green macaw, a red-lored Amazon, and a white cockatoo, plus five yellow-footed tortoises and one red-footed tortoise.
The former Miami Seaquarium bottlenose dolphins J.J. and Samantha “were transported from to the Dolphin Research Center,” in the Florida Keys, “on December 11, 2025,” Ceta Base said, noting that “Both animals were born at the Seaquarium––J.J. on September 4, 1976 and Samantha on November 6, 1986.”
“Following the Miami Seaquarium’s closure earlier in the year, all sixteen of its dolphins required new homes,” reported Janine Stanwood for WPLG television news.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Marineland of Niagara Falls belugas in danger
What will become of 30 beluga whales left at Marineland of Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada, remains hazy.
Despite the similarity of names, Marineland of Niagara Falls has no connection with Marineland of the Antibes, nor with Marineland of Florida, sold for $6.5 million at a November 10, 2025 bankruptcy auction to Jon and Barbara Rubel of Clay County, Florida.
The Rubels have indicated that they intend to keep their Marineland, built in 1938, in operation, with the animals, including 17 dolphins, now there.
Whale Sanctuary Project chief executive officer Charles Vinick suggested to Jeff Russo of WKBW in Buffalo on October 23, 2025 that “appropriately eight or so of [the Marineland of Niagara Falls] belugas could come to the sanctuary in Nova Scotia.”
But that would still leave 22 belugas behind, and none of the 20 may have much time to wait.
“Earlier this month,” Russo recounted, “the park warned it may have to euthanize the marine animals without Canadian government financial support.”
Closed since mid-2024
Opened in 1961 by John Holer (1935-2018), Marineland of Niagara Falls closed in mid-2024, five years after Holer’s death.
Canadian fisheries minister Joanne Thompson on October 1st, 2025 vetoed a proposed sale of the 30 belugas left at Marineland of Niagara Falls to Chimelong Ocean Kingdom in China.
“In her statement, minister Thompson maintains that continuing the belugas’ lives in captivity and as a source of entertainment is objectionable,” noted Dalhousie University philosophy professor Andrew Fenton on November 4, 2025 in an online commentary entitled “We Can’t Export Away our Legally Recognized Duties to Captive Cetaceans.”
Continued Fenton, Thompson highlighted “that denying Marineland the right to export these belugas aligns with the legally required consideration of ‘the best interests of the cetacean’s welfare,’ as required by Canadian law since 2019.
Since the passage of the law, Canadian Press reporter Liam Casey revealed on September 4, 2025, 19 beluga whales and one orca have died at Marineland of Niagara Falls.
(Helene O’Barry photo)
Dolphin captures may resume in the Solomon Islands
Dolphin Project founder Ric O’Barry observed to ANIMALS 24-7 on September 10, 2025, that “Dolphin abusement parks are falling like dominoes in slow motion. And our mailbox is full of questions asking us what WE are going to do with the dolphins and other whales?” left behind by the entertainment industry that made multi-millions of dollars exhibiting them.
Paradoxically, though, Mark J. Palmer of the International Marine Mammal Project of Earth Island Institute on November 11, 2025 warned that “The Solomon Islands government has been asked to approve the capture of 50 wild dolphins to be sold to aquariums around the world.”
(Earth Island Institute photo)
“We encourage them to turn down this latest scheme”
“The International Marine Mammal Project “has worked for years in the Solomon Islands,” Palmer wrote, “working with the tuna industry in that country to ensure that tuna is caught without harm to dolphins. The International Marine Mammal Project has also strongly opposed the capture of dolphins in the Solomon Islands for captivity.”
The government of the Solomon Islands “has been supportive of efforts to close down capture operations in the country for live dolphins,” Palmer said. “We encourage them to turn down this latest scheme.”
The Solomon Islands was, however, formerly a major exporter of dolphins to captive venues, chiefly in China and the Middle East.
(Daniel Leventhal photo)
That led to a very messy situation in December 2012 and January 2013, when dolphin hunters in the Solomon Islands, dolphin broker Christopher Porter, and some far-right U.S. news media blamed the Earth Island Institute Marine Mammal Project for the massacre of more than 1,000 dolphins after the collapse of a dolphins-for-ransom scheme.
(See Will Solomon Islands dolphin hunters profit from crackdown on Taiji?)
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