Tilikum has gone home

In his last days, Tilly was barely moving

He remained a float in a semi-comatose state behind the grid of his medical pool, at the back of the show pools. He watched the others dance to the thunderous music that had twisted his skull for twenty-four years. Never again would he come back on stage. Never again would he obey. He was going away and we can imagine that, far from being afraid, this idea soothed him.

The drugs blurred his mind, the fever made him shudder. Sometimes the young Kayla came out of the fog and held him on the other side of the bars. Or it was Trua, his grandson, or little Unna ... No, his daughter was dead, he could not remember when. He confused them all now. But he was happy that we cared about him. He felt death and it did not matter.

Then he plunged back into his waking dream and saw before him the vast open seas of Iceland and the fjords of his childhood. Far over there, on the edge of the horizon, his mother called out to him louder and louder, the piercing eerie cry of the orcas to call those who are far away. And he was swimming towards her.

SeaWorld will do everything to clear Tilly's memory

The company will continue to tell us that thirty-six years is very old for an orca, and that everything has been done to treat him at best. But this time, it will not work anymore. People know. And if they know, it's thanks to Tilikum. The whole world knows today the atrocious fate of this little orca snatched from his mother, locked in the dark with two mad females, who went mad and who killed three times before being lobotomized by drugs. They know that pneumonias, such as ulcers or "bowel twists," are diseases directly related to captivity. Stress, hunger, fear causes a massive immune system failure among these giants in jars, opening the door to all types of infection. They know the lies of this industry. In no case, ever, anywhere, can a cetacean live happily in slavery.

Anyway, no one is listening to what SeaWorld is saying

The group of amusement parks can publish all the videos they want, pay for the most expensive advertising campaigns, for them it's over. The mask has fallen off and the king is naked. Through the magic of the movie Blackfish, Tilly revealed everything about this hell of sadness, boredom and shame that he suffered like all captive orcas. He showed us that slaves can revolt and turn into killer orcas, who can kill humans, a species that exists only in pools.

Keiko was the first orca whose fate moved the public thanks to the movie Free Willy

His tragic death in the wild was a windfall to SeaWorld and its clone companies, who then repeated in a loop that freedom was killing orca’s. But it's Tilly who opened the eyes of the world to the true face of captivity. And SeaWorld will be his fourth victim.

Beyond his death, the powerful memory of Tilikum will continue to guide us towards this goal that we will reach: free all orcas from their concrete pits!