The Antibes water park is permanently closing its doors this Sunday, January 5, 2025. The future of the employees is uncertain and that of the two orcas is worrying. To this day, no one knows what will become of Wikie and her son Keijo, born in captivity.
The Marineland water park is permanently closing its doors this Sunday, January 5 after 50 years of existence. The closure was officially announced at the very beginning of January 2025 due to worsening financial problems linked to the promulgation of the law banning cetacean shows by 2026.
The management announced it in a press release: “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”.
Mike Ridell, the co-founder and former director of the park told BFMTV to feel “great sadness at this shipwreck” and accuses Ségolène Royal of having made the decision to ban cetacean shows without thinking about their future.
In a protected marine sanctuary?
The One Voice association wants to return the orcas to a protected marine sanctuary but for Mike Ridell, this is simply a utopia and he wonders who will pay.
For him, this would amount to creating a Marineland in nature, he says. For him, animals are absolutely not unhappy.
On the One Voice side, it’s a completely different story: “Marineland was founded by capturing a family of orcas off Seattle and they never adapted”.
Unable to survive alone outside the park
To date, the fate of the orcas is not at all settled. Marineland had asked to transfer the orcas to the park in Kobe, Japan. But their request was rejected by the French government, due to a lack of sufficient existing regulations on this subject.
Christine Grandjeau, president of the marine animal association “C’est Assez”, proposes to maintain the site in the best conditions by decreeing that the site becomes a sanctuary. But for the moment, the management of Marineland has not followed up on this idea.
The future of Wikie and her son Keijo, born in captivity, is very uncertain. What is certain, however, is that they could not survive alone, today, in any ocean.
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