Five months after Moana’s death, a new orca, Inouk, died at Marineland in Antibes, the marine zoo announced Thursday. An autopsy must be carried out on this 25-year-old male in the coming days. The resumption of orca shows, scheduled for Saturday, has been postponed, the zoo said in a press release.
Moana, a 12-year-old male, died “suddenly” in October. After long months of analyses, the zoo indicated that “acute bacterial septicemia” was the cause of his death. A few weeks earlier, French justice had demanded an expert opinion on his state of health and that of Inouk, deemed “pitiful” by One Voice. There are therefore only two orcas left, Wikie (Inouk’s brother) and Keijo (Inouk’s son), in the park’s pools. All the orcas were born in Antibes.
The last residents in a sanctuary?
The announcement of Inouk’s death should relaunch the debate on the fate of the last orcas in captivity in France. For months, associations like One Voice have been campaigning for the cetaceans to be transferred to a coastal sanctuary in Nova Scotia, Canada. As a reminder, the 2021 law against animal abuse will ban orca and dolphin shows in France from December 2026.
The largest marine zoo was accused of wanting to send its animals to Japan, a less protective country where they would continue to participate in shows. The Grasse court then prohibited any movement of the orcas until the end of the expert assessment operations and the submission of the report on their state of health and their living conditions in captivity, as required by the Court of Appeal of Grasse. ‘Aix-en-Provence last September.