Free Willy? The conundrum facing France's killer whales

Public pressure is growing on authorities to humanely rehabilitate two former performing orcas, following the closure of a marine park on the French Riviera.

On January 5, 2025, Marineland Antibes, near Cannes on the French Riviera, closed down following the introduction of new laws banning the use of dolphins and whales for use in marine park shows.

Two Icelandic killer whales – Wikie, 23 (incidentally, the first known orca able to mimic human speech), and her 11-year-old son Keijo – are still housed in the complex, amid cries from animal welfare groups to rehome the mammals.

However, with both whales born in captivity and without the skills to survive in the wild, doing so is proving to be a big problem – imagine taking your pet dog out of the house and sending it into the woods to live as a wolf. It’s simply not viable.

Initially, managers at the former park favoured sending the orcas to an aquarium in Japan, but were stopped from doing so because animal welfare laws in Japan are more relaxed than those in Europe, and because the 13,000km journey would have caused them too much stress.

Two options remain – send them to Loro Parque zoo in Tenerife (which complies with EU animal welfare standards but which may still use Wikie and Keijo for performances) or send them to an adapted ocean bay in Canada.

The latter solution is favoured by animal welfare campaigners, with The Whale Sanctuary Project hoping to build a facility in Port Hilford Bay, Nova Scotia.

But the organisation needs $15 million of funding, which it says it could attract if the French government would commit to sending the orcas there.

In 1996, Keiko, the killer whale that starred in the 1993 movie “Free Willy”, was rescued from captivity and taken to an ocean bay in Iceland two years later. He eventually left with a pod of orcas but died from an infection off the coast of Norway in 2003.

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