Inouk was born and died in Marineland’s pools; a life that was ruined by 25 years of captivity
We have just found out about Inouk’s death. For more than five years, his harmful state of health has outraged us, and we have not stopped sounding the alarm. We have moved heaven and earth so that the State will take responsibility after the 2021 law was voted in, which is full of holes and does not protect animals in reality. We oppose the dolphinarium that wanted and still wants to send them to Japan or another place to be exploited, both in legal terms and among the public. We have established good working relations with a marine sanctuary, the construction of which has already progressed, and which will represent the best way out for this family of orcas. International experts specialising in cetaceans, who we have appealed to, have given perfectly clear statements and reports on the urgency of helping them.
One Voice have planned action in front of the park on Saturday 30 March due to training shows being expected to start again at Marineland. In fact, after it was announced that the ticket price was reducing, testimonies from the keepers, the removal of stuffed toy orcas from the marine zoo shop’s shelves, and footage of the stress test that the orcas have had to undergo since the beginning of January until the day before it was closed to the public, which we broadcasted almost live and which ended up convincing the Grasse legal tribunal to ban moving these sea giants until an expert report on their state of health had been carried out, there was no longer any doubt that this was indeed a despicable project by these captivity industrialists.
Our activities as activists will now be an homage to Inouk. We are calling on as many people as possible to join us.
The expert report that we obtained from the Aix-en-Provence Court of Appeal was on Moana and Inouk’s state of health, both of them now deceased, but also on their environment, to find out about their interactions with the other orcas and the park’s facilities. Marineland has just appealed the Grasse tribunal’s decision, once again proving more than ever that they did not want to give them to chance to experience anything other than endless exploitation and that they wanted to get rid of them as quickly as possible. Moana died when he was just a teenager; the complaint we filed on his behalf following his death was closed. A few weeks ago, we silently celebrated 25 years of Inouk. He will not have even reached his parents’ age, who also died in these pools where he was born. Marineland is said to be in mourning, but the park, who cultivates a lack of transparency, knowingly created the conditions for this massacre.
We were interviewed by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition on sanctuary solutions, and the Ministry, after having made an initial call for a feasibility study, has just published another. There was a long time between Ms. Pompili’s announcement and any action… the Ministry obviously waited until it was too late.
Before finding out about Inouk’s death, we were confident that the expert report would continue. We are now uncertain on this point. And beyond the expert report in progress, there is now an urgent need for Wikie and Keijo to be taken out of Marineland.
With these two orca deaths in barely six months, and since the time we alerted public authorities of the imminence of a tragedy, we are filing a complaint against Marineland. We are doing everything we can to get the dolphinarium to respond for its actions and so that it cannot wriggle out of it once again.