Morgan, the killer whale “rescued” in the Wadden Sea, and nursed back to health at the Dolfinarium at Harderwijk, won’t be going back to the ocean, a Dutch judge has ruled. Instead, she’ll be sent to Loro Parque, where she will join the five orcas owned by SeaWorld.
It will be a challenging transition. Loro Parque is where trainer Alexis Martinez was killed in 2009, by Keto (my story on that tragedy is here). And it is a marine park with a very unstable social grouping, with the most visible manifestation being the severe scarring on the male, Tekoa.
Loro Parque also has a young calf, Adan, who is just over a year old. And to add to the potential complexity of adding Morgan to the Loro Parque mix, there is a lot of speculation among people who follow orcas and the marine parks closely that Kohana, the mother of Adan, is pregnant again. There has been no confirmation or comment either way from Loro Parque about this. But this is what Kohana looks like these days.
I am no expert, but here are some recent videos of Kohana a friend sent me, with the following comment:
She’s starting to get chunky enough that you should be able to pick her out as being the fat one even if you can’t ID her well otherwise. She looks way too big now for it to just be some change in her weight or something.
What do you think?
UPDATE: I just got solid confirmation that Kohana is in fact pregnant. So, with the addition of Morgan, Loro Parque is headed toward seven orcas, unless they move one or more out over the next year.
The Earthist Chronicles 
This is a sad day, indeed. If this proceeds as expected, I can’t help but see the parallels between Morgan and Lolita some 40 years ago.
Very sad indeed another life stolen from the ocean to a life of captivity!
Sad day. We must keep up the public pressure and the community with the proposed sea pen’s eagerness to participate in her rehabilitation for release to the pod in the area. We will never give up on Morgan.
i cant even watch the images of these so called shows,….i feel so bad for these poor animals, those intelligent creatures making such stupid jokes for the dumbest humans…
It is a very, very sad day. Morgan is headed to a life of living in a cramped tank with orcas from different ecotypes, to perform daily, and as soon as she is biologically capable of pumping out calves to fill Sea World tanks she too will be pregnant. Very depressing that with all the scientific evidence presented, the alternative of a seapen option, the evidence that orcas ARE found regularly in Norway whose calls match Morgan’s, and a very sound scientific plan for her move to a seapen and eventual release – that the judge could still rule to move Morgan to Loro Parque. We know there were deals made between Loro Parque and the Dolphinarium, now I’m wondering what kind of deals were made with the judge or court….
I agree! There probably was a deal made some how. SAD
This breaks my heart. Poor thing.
“Very Sad” is a bloody gross understatement!!
This is horifying!!
In a day and age when all most all science points at the clear wrongs of this process how on Earth can we stand by and let this happen!!
I don’t understand why people JUST DON’T ‘GET IT’…WILD ANIMALS BELONG IN THE WILD…Do the right thing and send this dolphin back out in the ocean
I stand corrected Whale
Morgan will stay there for a minimum time and will be transported…they’ll just wait for the legality to send her. My bet is SeaWorld. Utterly sad.
At one point when all the whales are jumping there seem to be so many of them in the pool. I had to hold my breath because it seemed like either they were going to crash into each other or jump right out of the pool. Those poor things. Imagine if that were you being asked to preform 365 days a year. This is straight up slavery.