A French marine park has closed down definitively as a result of a 2021 legislation banning reveals that includes marine mammals, leaving unsure futures for the 2 final orcas in captivity within the nation, lots of of different animals and dozens of employees.
The closure of the park on Sunday was marked by a last present by its two orcas, Wikie and Keijo, who have been acquired with rapturous applause by crowds who got here for its final day of operations.
Attendance had fallen sharply lately however many guests and workers alike expressed their dismay.
“Our hearts are in items,” mentioned Salome Mathis, a younger keeper who got here to say goodbye to her former colleagues on the water park.
The 2 orcas – often known as killer whales – themselves face an unsure future.
Animal activists had been angered by Marineland’s plans to switch its two orcas to Japan, a transfer France’s ecology minister mentioned she opposed over Tokyo’s extra lax animal welfare legal guidelines.
The way forward for the 4,000 different animals of 150 totally different species together with dolphins, sea lions, turtles and fish additionally stays unclear.
Marineland was hit by a firestorm of controversy in March after two of its orcas died inside 5 months of one another.
The park, close to Antibes on the French Riviera, has some 4,000 animals from 150 totally different species. However customer numbers have dropped from 1.2m a yr in its heyday, when it was a flagship attraction of the Cote d’Azur, to simply 425,000 over the previous decade.
It employed 103 everlasting employees and a few 500 seasonal employees.
“I perceive that it’s closing with the drop in attendance, however I’m disenchanted as a result of we might have advanced in a different way,” mentioned Jeremy Lo Vasco, 34, a keeper for 10 years.
“For the second, we’re not interested by our personal destiny as a result of our precedence is that the animals are properly, however the hammer blow will come later.”
Vasco evoked a “snowball impact” from quite a few elements together with the floods of 2015 which submerged the positioning, the 2013 documentary movie Blackfish denouncing the captivity of cetaceans, and the Covid pandemic.
These led the park’s proprietor, the Spanish group Parques Reunidos, to announce its definitive closure with solely leisure actions to be saved throughout summer season.
The park has mentioned 90% of its guests come for its orca and dolphin performances.
The closure of Marineland places an finish to a narrative that started when Rely Roland Paulze d’Ivoy de La Poype – a hero of the second world conflict – opened the park solely devoted to marine fauna primarily based on what he had seen within the US.
Marineland has till December 2026 to half with its two remaining orcas.
The precedence is to “relocate all the animals to one of the best amenities at the moment accessible”, the park has mentioned.
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