Located on the Côte d'Azur, the Marineland park plans a “permanent closure” on January 5, 2026, its management announced in a press release. The plan to close the establishment, which employs 103 employees, was announced to the Social and Economic Committee (CSE) on Wednesday morning, said the park management. Faced with the next ban on cetacean shows on December 1, 2026, the Riviera park has long been looking for a base for its protected animals.
“While 90% of visitors choose to come to Marineland to admire representations of orcas and dolphins, the law of November 30, 2021, prohibiting cetacean shows, requires Marineland to consider this closure,” explains the press release, which also highlights a continued drop in attendance. In ten years, this has increased from 1.2 million to 425,000 visitors per year.
The establishment had sparked controversy in recent months by considering the transfer of its last two orcas to a Japanese park, to the great dismay of animal rights activists. A request that the Minister of Ecological Transition, Agnès Pannier-Runacher, had refused in the name of “animal welfare”. “There are parks which today are able to accommodate orcas”, like “in Spain”, but “in Japan, there are no such thorough regulations”, she estimated.
With its approximately 4,000 animals (orcas, dolphins, sea lions, turtles and numerous fish and corals), Marineland sets its “priority objectives” to “relocate all of its animals to the best existing structures to date”. It also aims to “negotiate in the coming weeks with the social partners the social consequences of this closure project”.
VideoKiska, 'the loneliest orca in the world,' dies after 43 years in captivity
Two of the four orcas that Marineland held until last year died recently, one from septicemia and the other after ingesting a foreign body. The two surviving orcas, Wikie and her son Keijo, were both born in captivity in this Antibes park, the first in 2001 and the second in 2013.
