17 March 2023

Rest in peace, Kiska

Sometimes known as “the world’s loneliest orca”, Kiska the killer whale spent more than four decades in captivity at MarineLand, a theme park in Niagara Falls, Canada.

For the last 12 of those years, despite wild orcas being social and intelligent animals that live in tight-knit family pods that hunt together and communicate through underwater clicks and calls, Kiska swam alone, in a featureless tank, with no calves, mate or mother by her side. She was the last captive orca in Canada...

Kiska’s death comes four years after Canada passed bill S-203, banning the captivity and breeding of whales, dolphins and porpoises. Although the new law was too late for Kiska – individuals already in captivity were excluded from protection – activists say her story was instrumental in drawing public attention to the plight of captive marine mammals.
More information at The Guardian.

4 comments:

  1. This is the sort of thing that ought to shake us to the core on a moral level. Instead it's seen as mostly peripheral. In that lies information about our failure to remain a viable species.

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  2. Rest in peace, Kiska. I'm sorry for what they did to you.

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  3. John Lilly, the guy who says he can talk to dolphins, said he was in an aquarium, and he was talking to a big whale who was swimming around and around in his tank. And the whale kept asking him questions telepathically. And one of the questions the whale kept asking was: "do all oceans have walls?" (Laurie Anderson ~ The Ugly One with the Jewels and Other Stories)

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  4. Notice the tastefully cropped dorsal fin in this and all the other pictures of her I could find. It flops to one side or the other after a few years in a cage.

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