A French marine park has closed down definitively due to a 2021 law banning shows featuring marine mammals, leaving uncertain futures for the two last orcas in captivity in the country, hundreds of other animals and dozens of staff.
The closure of the park on Sunday was marked by a final show by its two orcas, Wikie and Keijo, who were received with rapturous applause by crowds who came for its last day of operations.
Attendance had fallen sharply in recent years but many visitors and employees alike expressed their dismay.
“Our hearts are in pieces,” said Salome Mathis, a young keeper who came to say goodbye to her former colleagues at the water park.
The two orcas – also known as killer whales – themselves face an uncertain future.
Animal activists had been angered by Marineland’s plans to transfer its two orcas to Japan, a move France’s ecology minister said she opposed over Tokyo’s more lax animal welfare laws.
The future of the 4,000 other animals of 150 different species including dolphins, sea lions, turtles and fish also remains unclear.
Marineland was hit by a firestorm of controversy in March after two of its orcas died within five months of each other.
The park, near Antibes on the French Riviera, has some 4,000 animals from 150 different species. But visitor numbers have dropped from 1.2m a year in its heyday, when it was a flagship attraction of the Cote d’Azur, to just 425,000 over the past decade.
It employed 103 permanent staff and some 500 seasonal workers.
“I understand that it’s closing with the drop in attendance, but I’m disappointed because we could have evolved differently,” said Jeremy Lo Vasco, 34, a keeper for 10 years.
“For the moment, we’re not thinking about our own fate because our priority is that the animals are well, but the hammer blow will come later.”
Vasco evoked a “snowball effect” from numerous factors including the floods of 2015 which submerged the site, the 2013 documentary film Blackfish denouncing the captivity of cetaceans, and the Covid pandemic.
These led the park’s owner, the Spanish group Parques Reunidos, to announce its definitive closure with only recreational activities to be kept during summer.
The park has said 90% of its visitors come for its orca and dolphin performances.
The closure of Marineland puts an end to a story that began when Count Roland Paulze d’Ivoy de La Poype – a hero of the second world war – opened the park entirely dedicated to marine fauna based on what he had seen in the US.
Marineland has until December 2026 to part with its two remaining orcas.
The priority is to “relocate all of the animals to the best facilities currently available”, the park has said.
