Whales in France need a new home

Uncertain future for French orcas - 17th March 2025

Two orcas, Wikie and Keijo, are the only remaining ones still kept in captivity in France. A ban on keeping marine mammals in this way has been in place since 2020. Now Marineland, the centre where the pair of killer whales are held, has just closed its doors.

There's been intense debate about the fate of 23-year-old Wikie and her 11-year-old son Keijo, both of whom have lived their entire lives at Marineland. The first proposal was to transfer them to a marine park in Japan, but French Ecology minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher opposed this, stating concerns about Japan's more relaxed animal welfare laws.

Many animal rights supporters have pushed for the killer whales to be sent to a sanctuary, where they wouldn't be obliged to perform or be used for breeding. Last year, the Whale Sanctuary Project in Canada proposed placing them in their sanctuary off the coast of Nova Scotia. Ultimately, this was rejected due to the distance and the low water temperature, given the whales were born in the south of France.

Pannier-Runacher has proposed a plan to construct a sanctuary in Europe, together with Spain, Italy and Greece. Meanwhile, the Canadians have fought back in a letter to the minister in which they mention Dr David Perpiñán's views, from the European College of Zoological Medicine. He states, "Wikie and Keijo's origin is Iceland," adding that a Mediterranean sanctuary "is probably the worst of the possible options."

A final alternative is the offer of Loro Parque, a marine zoo located on the Spanish island of Tenerife. The Vice-President of the site, Christoph Kiessling, believes that sanctuaries are actually unable to meet the complex demands of orcas.

Whilst France celebrates the year of the sea, the mother-son duo are stuck in a facility that's being shut down around them. Their destiny remains unknown.