After the family film “Free Willy” premiered in 1993, the letters, calls, and advocacy of millions of moviegoers – especially children – helped the International Marine Mammal Project rehabilitate and free the real-life orca at the center of the movie, Keiko. Keiko’s story sparked a dramatic change in public attitude toward whale captivity, but today Keiko’s legacy is in jeopardy.
Right now two captive orcas in France are facing a cruel fate: Wikie and Keijo are mother and son orcas who have been held captive in the Marineland Antibes aquarium for nearly a decade. With the planned January 2025 closure of that aquarium, Marineland Antibes must relocate the two whales.
The French Ministry’s Inspector General Report recommends that Wikie and Keijo be relocated into a whale sanctuary. But if the Ministry does not mandate this, Marineland Antibes plans to send them to concrete tanks in Japan or Spain. Upon arrival, the orcas will almost certainly be separated from each other, placed in even smaller tanks, and entered into forced breeding programs.
In 1993, public pressure saved Keiko from a fate like this. Please add your name to our petition to the French government asking them to INSIST that Wikie and Keijo be rescued and sent to the whale sanctuary in Nova Scotia instead.
To: The French Ministry
From: [Your Name]
I [Your Name], call on the French Ministry to INSIST that Marineland Antibes frees captive orcas Wikie and Keijo into the Nova Scotia seaside whale sanctuary being prepared for them instead of sending these whales to a zoo or aquarium where they are at risk of being separated, forced into breeding programs, and live their remaining days in unpardonable suffering.
The world is watching you, and it would be unconscionable for Marineland Antibes to send Wikie and Keijo to lives of misery in small concrete tanks.
