In Tenerife, Loro Parque will stop at nothing to make a profit from Morgan

Morgan was captured off the coast of the Netherlands in 2010, alone and emaciated, when she was just a youngster. Yet while the programme authorising her to be seized laid out the conditions for her to get back into shape then to be freed into the North Sea, where her family were waiting for her, this never happened. Instead, she was sent to the tropical latitudes of Spanish dolphinarium Loro Parque, off the coast of Africa, to boost the captivity industry.

A few years after her arrival in the Canaries, Morgan gave birth to her first baby. “An accident” according the park, who failed to prevent the death of her baby Ula less than three years later. Today, Loro Parque does not see any problem with keeping the 16-year-old orca and Keto, Ula’s father, in the same pool... They are no doubt looking for her to get pregnant again, thus making it possible for them to profit a bit more off the back of a new captive.

An orca used as a lucrative attraction

Morgan is put at the centre of the show for the public. She has to do a series of leaps out of the water, splashing the seating area so that she can... eat. On the big screen, the dolphinarium tells the moving story, while completely changing it, of her 'rescue’. To justify her being kept captive and continuing to profit off the back of her, they do not mind telling lies.

Telling anyone about the aggression between orcas and towards the trainers is carefully avoided. However, Tekoa’s father is Tilikum, the infamous hero from the Blackfish documentary that allowed many people to open their eyes to the reality of these detention centres.

Loro Parque has gone so far as to present the image of a happy family of orcas, instead of a group of individuals unbalanced by boredom and, in particular, a lack of space. Keto’s violent matings on the only female of the group are romanticised, and the awful confrontations between Adan and Tekoa, whose body in covered in bite marks, are left unspoken. However, as well as little Ula being born with a fin deformity, two other orcas have died in the last two years: Skyla and Kohana.

Morgan, who is suffering from dental issues and behavioural problems, is now the only orca born in the wild to be kept in a European park. Her exploitation must stop!

Alongside the New-Zealander marine biologist Ingrid Visser and the Free Morgan Foundation, we have been fighting since the start for her to be freed from the concrete pool where she is imprisoned. Together, we are asking that she be transferred to a sanctuary where she can finally live with free will, far from the violence of the shows forced upon her. And perhaps find her family again, located along the Norwegian coast.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice