Tokitae could return home to Puget Sound by Thanksgiving
WASHINGTON - Indianapolis Colts owner and philanthropist Jim Irsay is personally funding efforts to bring Tokitae back home to the Puget Sound, and said she could be back in her ancestral waters by Thanksgiving.
About 50 years ago, Tokitae was taken from her native waters in Puget Sound and shipped to the Miami Seaquarium, where she performed under the name Lolita up until 2022.
Tokitae is the only surviving orca that was captured en masse in Penn Cove in Puget Sound on Aug. 8, 1970.
There have been calls from animal activists and members of the Lummi tribe to bring her back to Puget Sound for decades. At the end of March, an agreement was made to finally bring her back to Puget Sound.
It’s official: Agreement in place to bring Tokitae home from Miami Seaquarium to Puget Sound
It’s official: An agreement is in place to bring Tokitae, a Southern Resident killer whale also known as Lolita, home to the Pacific Northwest after she was forcefully removed from a cove near Whidbey Island more than 50 years ago.
On the Pat McAfee Show, a popular sports talk show, Irsay detailed what efforts are going into bringing Tokitae home.
"This is being planned to the detail with aggressive nature of saying ‘let’s try to get this done, not next year, maybe by Thanksgiving hopefully," Irsay said. "We wanna get her out as soon as we can."
Irsay told McAfee that he is personally bankrolling efforts to bring Tokitae back: from paying for housing for her trainers and veterinarians to putting a large tank in an airplane for her transport. He is also paying for her current care at the Seaquarium. Irsay has been advocating for Tokitae for years, and helped co-found the non-profit Friends of Toki.
Tokitae's trainers are working with her in the Seaquarium, practicing getting her into her netting so she will feel comfortable in her new tank for transport. The plan is to put her on a C-17 plane (typically considered a military transport plane) or a Boeing 747.
Her lead veterinarian at the Miami Seaquarium said she is now in the best condition that he has seen in any years of assessing her health, and so far looks good for transport, according to Friends of Toki.
She is also being introduced to new enrichment "toys" months ahead of her transport. These enrichment toys include artificial kelp so that she becomes comfortable with new stimuli representative of what she will experience in Washington State waters. She has also been introduced to the stretcher (fabric sling) in which she will be transported to her new ocean home
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When Tokitae returns to Puget Sound, she won't be released into the open ocean to fend for herself. She would first be put in a 15-acre netted area in the Salish Sea with two dolphins who are also currently at the Seaquarium. There, she will be looked at by veterinarians and cared for and fed by her trainers.
It’s unclear whether Tokitae will ever be able to re-connect with her extended family in L-pod, one of three groupings within the Southern Resident population. There are 32 members of the L-pod members that are alive – including an 89-year-old orca that is believed to be Tokitae’s mother. Tokitae herself is now 57 years old.