The closure saddened many (MIGUEL MEDINA). In the photo, an instructor maneuvers with a dolphin.
By AFP - Agence France Presse
French marine park closes due to law banning killer whale shows.
Vincent-Xavier MORVAN
A French marine park closed for good on Sunday due to a 2021 law banning marine mammal shows, leaving an uncertain future for the country's last two captive orcas, hundreds of other animals, and dozens of employees.
The park's closure was marked by a final show by its two orcas, Wikie and Keijo, who were greeted with rapturous applause by crowds who came for the last day of operations.
Scores of visitors and staff 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 - known as killer whales - face an uncertain future.
Animal activists were furious at Marineland's plans to transfer its two orcas to Japan, which France's ecology minister said she opposed due to Tokyo's laxer animal welfare laws.
The future of the other 4,000 animals from 150 species, including dolphins, sea lions, turtles, and fish, also remains uncertain.
Marineland was hit by a storm of controversy in March after two of its orcas died five months apart.
The park, near Antibes on the French Riviera, has around 4,000 animals of 150 different species. But visitor numbers have fallen from 1.2 million a year in its heyday, when it was the main attraction on the Cote d'Azur, to just 425,000 in the last decade.
It employed 103 permanent staff and around 500 seasonal workers.
“I understand that it's closing with the drop in visitor numbers, but I'm disappointed because we could have evolved differently,” said Jeremy Lo Vasco, 34, keeper for ten years.
“At the moment, we're not thinking about our own fate because our priority is for the animals to be well, but the hammer blow will come later,” he added.
He evoked a “snowball effect” of several factors, including the 2015 floods that submerged the site, the 2013 documentary “Blackfish” denouncing cetacean captivity, and the Covid pandemic.
- 'Relocate all the animals' -
These facts led the park's owner, the Spanish group Parques Reunidos, to announce its definitive closure, with only recreational activities being maintained during the summer season.
The park said that 90% of its visitors come to see the orcas and dolphins.
The closure of Marineland brings to an end a story that began when Count Roland Paulze d'Ivoy de La Poype - a hero of the Second World War - opened a park entirely dedicated to marine fauna based on what he had seen in the United States.
Marineland has until December 2026 to dispose of its two remaining killer whales, Keijo and Wikie.
The priority is to “relocate all animals to the best facilities available at the time,” the park said.
But the planned transfer of its last two orcas - both born in captivity - to Japan is unacceptable, France's Ecology Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher told Franceinfo radio in November.
“In Japan, there is no extensive regulation regarding animal welfare,” she argued.
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