Known as “Willy” to film buffs, the real life Keiko was captured when he was about 3 years old and lived in a small tank in a Mexican amusement park until the time pictured in “Free Willy,” a film about a boy who trains the whale to jump to freedom at a marine park. It involves transferring Lolita to a seaside sanctuary in the Pacific Northwest, an area very similar to her native home, teaching her to fend for herself, and eventually releasing her back into the wild. Just last month, former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine and the Miami Beach City Commission unanimously passed a resolution urging the Seaquarium to retire Lolita based on the recommendations of a long-standing plan originally created in 1995 by Washington-based nonprofit Orca Network. But the donations keep piling up, the protests go on, and plans for her release continue to resurface. The “Free Lolita” movement has outlived even its creator, Lowry, who died in March. SeaWorld has since announced it would end its breeding program for captive orcas. Key to that shift was the death of trainer Dawn Brancheau, who was killed by an orca following a performance at SeaWorld Orlando in 2010. Kick-started by the release of “Blackfish,” a 2013 documentary detailing the plight of orcas in captivity, the change in public perception has caused shares of marine theme park company SeaWorld to sink by about 40 percent this year alone. In recent years, Lolita’s story has been awash in a tidal wave of public opinion that has crashed against marine parks that house captive animals.
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