The drone hovers above Marineland Antibes on August 12, 2025. Below, in a concrete pool where green algae now covers significant portions of the surface, two trainers work with 11-year-old orca Keijo—born November 20, 2013, never knowing ocean. One holds his flipper steady as he floats upside down. The other reaches into the water and manually stimulates the whale’s genitals.
In an adjacent pool, his mother Wikie swims in circles. The same pattern she’s traced for twenty-three years, but now with reduced filtration and no permanent veterinary staff. Mediterranean storm season typically begins in November.
This is what remains 234 days after Europe’s largest marine park closed to the public on January 5, 2025.
The first warnings came from American photographer Seph Lawless, who entered the facility without authorization in June. His viral videos showed dolphins floating in green water and security reduced to minimal coverage. His documentation triggered systematic monitoring by TideBreakers, an activist organization already tracking the facility since closure.
Wikie and Keijo, mother and son killer whales, at the closed theme park Marineland Antibes, France. Credit: TideBreakers
What they captured on August 12 left co-founder Marketa Schusterova “very shocked,” she told France Info. The footage showed the sexual stimulation of Keijo by his trainers.
The French ecology ministry confirmed that Marineland performs this procedure monthly, with veterinary consultation. The facility claims it’s “necessary” to prevent inbreeding between mother and son.
But the timing raises questions I couldn’t ignore. Earth, Japan’s last male orca, had died on August 3—nine days before this footage. Japan’s marine parks operate under less restrictive breeding regulations than European facilities. One Voice reported that Marineland signed a contract with Japanese company GRANVISTA Hotels & Resorts in October 2023.
Both Marineland and French authorities deny plans to export semen. Yet the practice continues.
Former SeaWorld trainer Valerie Greene, now with TideBreakers, stated: “In my decade training orcas, I’ve never seen manual stimulation performed except for semen collection. If that’s what’s happening, despite denials, we need to ask where it’s going.”
Here’s what they don’t tell you about the global cetacean trade: semen is currency. While activists focus on stopping live captures and governments ban public shows, the genetic material trade operates in shadows—legal, lucrative, and completely unregulated. Japan needs genetic diversity after Earth’s death. China’s expanding industry needs breeding stock. A single vial from a young male like Keijo could revitalize an entire breeding program halfway around the world.
Marineland trainers stimulate male orca Keijo as his mother Wikie is kept in an adjacent pool. Credit: TideBreakers
The drone footage revealed more than this controversial procedure. Every week that passes, the pools get worse. Algae coverage increases by three percent weekly—by November, the water will be opaque. The filtration system, designed for continuous operation, runs in four-hour bursts to save money. Water testing has dropped from hourly to twice weekly. Chemistry adjustments happen “when necessary.” Temperature fluctuates five degrees daily instead of remaining constant.
Every day of minimal care saves money. And Parques Reunidos, the Spanish conglomerate that owns Marineland, has 487 days until France’s December 2026 legal deadline requiring all cetaceans to be removed from French facilities.
The mathematics of neglect are straightforward. The Whale Sanctuary Project estimates proper sanctuary care costs $1.5-2 million annually. Current maintenance at Marineland—with skeleton crews and reduced operations—costs a fraction of that. If Parques Reunidos maintains minimal care until the legal deadline, they could save €6.2 million compared to proper sanctuary standards.
If the orcas don’t survive until then, the savings would be complete.
I’ve covered ecological malfeasance for years—Malaysian dictators destroying Borneo’s rainforests, families making billions from ecological genocide. But there’s something particularly grotesque about watching a multinational corporation run a cost-benefit analysis on whether two sentient beings should live or die. The banality of this evil stops me cold.
To understand this calculation requires following ownership through three layers. Marineland was purchased by Parques Reunidos in 2006 for €75 million. The company, operating more than sixty parks globally, was acquired by Swedish private equity firm EQT in 2019 for €630.7 million.
EQT manages €100 billion in assets. Marineland represents 0.0006% of their portfolio—a rounding error on a spreadsheet, but life or death for two orcas.
When contacted about conditions at the facility, EQT directed questions to Parques Reunidos. Parques Reunidos didn’t respond to multiple requests in English, Spanish, and French. The silence speaks volumes.
Since closure, every proposed solution has failed, and each rejection means more weeks of deteriorating conditions.
February brought the first hope. The Whale Sanctuary Project offered their developing Nova Scotia site. France rejected it within weeks, citing water temperatures and incomplete construction. The sanctuary still hasn’t broken ground. Thirty days lost.
April brought Spanish authorities evaluating Loro Parque in Tenerife, an operational facility with existing orcas. Scientists ruled the tanks too small, too shallow, inadequate for additional animals. Sixty-five more days lost.
June brought Italy’s proposal for a Taranto sanctuary. Officials suggested it “could be ready within a year.” A year. The orcas need rescue now, not next summer.
Charles Vinick of the Whale Sanctuary Project offered emergency measures two months ago: “We could create temporary pools immediately. This is about saving lives.” Cost for emergency facilities: $500,000. Time to construct: six weeks. French response: still under consideration after forty-seven days.
Each rejection isn’t just bureaucracy. It’s weeks of increasing algae, decreasing oversight, multiplying risk. Winter approaches. The pools deteriorate. And Wikie and Keijo keep circling.
What’s happening at Marineland follows a grim template. When marine parks close without immediate transfer plans, animals die.
Miami Seaquarium faced eviction in March 2024 after years of violations. Their orca Lolita survived fifty-three years in captivity, then died during transfer planning. At least one hundred twenty whales and dolphins died there over its lifetime.
Barcelona Zoo’s last dolphin died during facility closure negotiations in 2020. Mexico’s Xcaret lost three dolphins in the six months between show cancellation and transfer in 2019. The pattern repeats: care decreases, stress increases, animals die.
World Animal Protection reports that Marineland has already dismissed over forty staff members since closure, including all veterinary personnel. Two trainers remain from an original fifty. No overnight staff. No emergency coverage. No backup if someone gets sick.
“Every day I expect to arrive and find one of them dead,” one trainer told a local reporter, requesting anonymity.
The killer whales and dolphins that have been left behind in Marineland Antibes, in quickly deteriorating conditions. Credit: TideBreakers, Seph Lawless
Orcas aren’t fish that can survive benign neglect. They’re mammals with complex needs that deteriorate rapidly without proper care. Their skin is more sensitive than human skin—algae causes lesions within weeks, lesions become infections, and in stressed animals with compromised immune systems, infections become fatal.
Keijo already shows warning signs. Excessive scratching against pool walls. Floating listlessly for hours. The progressive dorsal fin collapse that indicates systemic health breakdown. At eleven, he should be entering his prime. Instead, he’s showing signs of premature aging.
Wikie has survived twenty-three years in these pools, watching her brother Inouk die in March 2024 after ingesting metal from deteriorating infrastructure. Her son Moana died in October 2023 from bacterial infection. Valentin died in 2015 when storm flooding contaminated the pools.
Wild female orcas can live eighty years. At Marineland, they average eighteen.
Winter changes everything. Mediterranean storms disrupt minimal maintenance. Cold stresses immune systems. The facility’s deteriorating barriers might not withstand winter swells. Storm season begins in 45 days, and forecasts suggest it will arrive early this year.
What the footage reveals transcends the story of two abandoned orcas. It exposes the gap between our moral proclamations and practical commitments. France banned cetacean captivity to signal progressive values, but the law didn’t fund solutions or mandate immediate action. It simply set a deadline far enough away that someone else would have to solve the problem.
Other countries did better. When the UK ended cetacean shows, animals were relocated before facilities closed. When Miami Seaquarium faced shutdown, federal agencies intervened despite corporate resistance. These efforts required what France hasn’t provided: immediate action backed by resources.
Instead, Wikie and Keijo exist in limbo—no longer performers but not yet free, maintained at the absolute minimum while humans debate their fate in comfortable conference rooms far from the corroding pools of Antibes.
As I write this on August 26, the sun sets over Marineland. The drone cameras are gone. The activists have posted their footage. The headlines are already fading. But in the pools, nothing has changed.
Wikie is swimming her circles right now, the same pattern worn into her muscle memory over twenty-three years. She calls occasionally in the dialect she taught her dead sons—sounds that would carry for miles in the ocean but here just echo off concrete walls.
The circle has become their universe. Wikie’s twenty-three years of clockwise rotations. Keijo’s eleven years following her wake. The activists circling with drones. The bureaucrats circling in meetings. The money circling through offshore accounts. Everyone trapped in their own loops while pretending motion equals progress.
But circles don’t lead anywhere. They just wear deeper grooves.
Keijo floats near the surface, waiting for tomorrow’s feeding of frozen fish, or next month’s stimulation, or winter’s arrival—whichever comes first. His eleven years have known only chlorine and concrete, performance and confinement. Now he knows abandonment disguised as minimal care.
The French ecology ministry will meet to discuss the Italian sanctuary proposal. They’ll schedule another meeting for the next month, and the next. Storm season begins in forty-five days. The legal deadline is 487 days away.
This is their reality today, August 26, 2025. They need extraction not to a perfect sanctuary—perfect doesn’t exist—but to anywhere with proper filtration, full staffing, veterinary care, and water that doesn’t turn greener each day.
Here’s what they don’t want you to understand: every day of delay is a choice. Every meeting that could have been an emergency intervention. Every proposal that could have been an immediate rescue. The French government and Parques Reunidos aren’t failing to act—they’re succeeding at waiting. Waiting for public attention to move on. Waiting for winter to solve the problem. Waiting for biology to close the file.
France has been crafting solutions for 234 days. The algae keeps growing. Winter keeps approaching. And every sunrise brings Wikie and Keijo closer to joining Moana, Inouk, and Valentin—casualties of an industry we declared obsolete but refused to properly close.
The question isn’t whether they deserve better. It’s whether anyone will act before biology answers for us.
This article relies entirely on publicly available documents, NGO reports, and mainstream media coverage (linked throughout). All financial figures are documented estimates. Parties named are invited to send clarifications or rebuttals to [email protected].
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