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In a quiet, closed marine park on the picturesque French Riviera, two orcas continue to swim in circles, the last of their kind in captivity in France.
Meet Wikie, a 24-year-old orca, and her 12-year-old son, Keijo. Both were born and have spent their entire lives in captivity.
Their current residence, Marineland Antibes, has been shut to the public since January 2025. Yet, over a year later, these majestic creatures remain in the confines of their enclosure.
In late 2025, footage of Wikie and Keijo in their tank captured public attention and quickly went viral, sparking renewed interest and concern over their situation.
But for Wikie and Keijo — and other marine animals like them — fierce debate around their future has yet to lead to a definite solution.
In December, it seemed as though one may have been reached: sending Wikie and Keijo to a yet-to-be-built whale sanctuary.
The plan was proposed by a group called the Whale Sanctuary Project (WSP), whose goal is to create a sanctuary in Nova Scotia, a province on the east coast of Canada, to house dolphins and whales released from captivity.
The French ministry of ecological transition announced it had decided Wikie and Keijo could join the Whale Sanctuary Project, saying in a statement that the transfer “could take place in the summer of 2026”.
Mathieu Lefèvre, the minister delegate, said it was “the only ethical solution, credible and in accordance with the law”.
In an Instagram post at the time, the WSP said it had a “tight schedule to meet” to be able to welcome Wikie and Keijo by the end of summer in the northern hemisphere.
“While we have the funds to begin construction, we do not yet have the funds to meet every milestone as we work to complete the sanctuary,” the statement said.
Despite the initial momentum, Wikie and Keijo’s future is still unconfirmed. French officials were due to make a formal decision about the whale’s future by the end of March, but this has not yet occurred.
Marineland, which owns the whales, called the WSP plan a “hypothetical solution that does not exist” in February, according to The Guardian.
It has instead called for the orcas to be transferred to a marine park in Tenerife, Spain, where it says the animals will have better care.
There are also concerns, including from anti-whaling organisation Sea Shepherd France, that the water in Nova Scotia would be too cold for the orcas. The WSP says that as Wikie and Keijo are Icelandic whales, they are biologically adapted to this environment.
This is the complex reality of rehoming whales.
Why Wikie and Keijo need to be rehomed
Theme park Marineland Antibes, where Wikie and Keijo are currently homed, closed in 2025 due to “serious economic difficulties”, including declining attendance, post-COVID-19 economic issues and, crucially, a law change.
In 2021, the French government banned the captivity and performance of cetaceans: whales, dolphins and porpoises. Marine parks and aquariums were given until December 2026 to find new homes for those already in captivity.
Since the French law was introduced, Wikie’s 25-year-old brother Inouk and her 12-year-old son Moana have died.
Marineland Antibes initially tried to transfer Wikie and Keijo to a marine park in Japan, but the French government rejected this based on concerns of insufficient animal protection standards.
A proposal to move the whales to Spain was also previously rejected by a Spanish scientific agency.
Dr Lori Marino, founder of the Whale Sanctuary Project, spoke to SBS Dateline prior to the French government’s December statement.
“There are a lot of facilities … [that are] closing down, and that’s a great first step, and I applaud them for that. But now they need to step up and help care for these animals who they bred into captivity,” she said.
A chance for ‘a dignified retirement’
There are 54 orcas in captivity worldwide, according to global dolphin and whale captivity tracker Cetabase.
As countries start introducing bans on cetacean captivity, another problem is emerging.
Dr Naomi Rose is the senior scientist of marine mammal biology at the Animal Welfare Institute in Washington DC. She’s also on the board of the WSP.
According to Rose, more than intelligence or ecology, the best predictor of how well a species will fare in captivity is how wide-ranging they are — essentially, how far they typically travel.
Orcas can travel hundreds of kilometres a day, regularly diving 20 to 30m below the surface. Rose said the largest enclosures only tend to be around 70m long, 30m wide, and 10 to 12m deep.
Whales born and raised in captivity, like Wikie and Keijo, have spent their lives performing for food. They haven’t had the chance to learn necessary survival skills, so can’t be released into the wild.
The “goal is to provide as many of these animals who are currently in captivity the option of a dignified retirement,” Rose told Dateline.
The potential for whale sanctuaries
According to Rose, there are “well-established” models for wildlife sanctuaries, but these are all land-based. Establishing a marine sanctuary is more difficult.
“You can buy land, you can buy a huge amount of land, a ranch or whatever, and then turn it into an elephant sanctuary. You can’t do that with the ocean. You can’t buy the ocean. You have to rent it, if you will,” she said.
There are currently no sanctuaries capable of supporting orcas.
In October 2025, the WSP was given approval from Nova Scotia’s provincial government.
The next step takes “a lot of money” — Lori Marino estimates US$15 million ($22.6 million).
“We know exactly what we need to do to create the sanctuary,” she told Dateline. “We need the whales.”
As well as Wikie and Keijo, the WSP has considered belugas from Canada and South Korea as potential candidates.
Why is rehoming whales so complicated?
Public attitudes towards the captivity of whales, and the existence of zoos more broadly, have been shifting over the past few decades.
Academic studies have investigated “the Blackfish effect”, the term given to the shift in public opinion after the release of the 2013 documentary Blackfish, which looked at the impact of captivity on Tilikum, an orca whale at Sea World in the US who was involved in the deaths of three people.
At the time, SeaWorld said, “instead of a fair and balanced treatment of a complex subject, the film is inaccurate and misleading”.
In the wake of the documentary’s release, a campaign to #EmptyTheTanks spread on social media alongside protests outside SeaWorld.
SeaWorld ultimately stopped its orca breeding program, announcing their current whales would be the last generation at their parks.
“As society’s understanding of orcas continues to change, SeaWorld is changing with it.” then SeaWorld Entertainment CEO Joel Manby said at the time.
Rose said marine parks could make changes to their business models that would allow them to improve the welfare of their whales while still generating profit, potentially through building their own sanctuaries. But they are “very rigid in their idea of what makes a profit”.
Rose said the three main arguments for keeping captive orcas as “ambassadors for their species” are research, conservation, and education. But she said this approach is flawed as global conservation efforts have had limited success.
And since the captive environment is so different to the ocean, scientific findings aren’t easily transferrable, she said.
Parks argue they educate the public by engaging audiences and encourage them to participate in broader conservation efforts. Rose said the data doesn’t show this.
“It happens once in a while, but it doesn’t justify the suffering these animals go through to make five conservationists.”
Thirty belugas under threat of euthanasia
Similarly to France, the Canadian parliament passed a law in 2019 to restrict the future captivity of whales and dolphins.
Camille Labchuk is an animal rights lawyer and the executive director of advocacy group Animal Justice Canada. She was part of the nearly four-year campaign to change Canada’s laws.
She said the idea of the law was that “the generation in tanks now would be the last generation”.
She said solving the issues of rehoming animals in captivity would require a “concerted international effort”.
“The world has plenty of coastline. The world has plenty of goodwill.”
Marineland of Canada (no relation to Marineland Antibes) closed to the public in September 2024. Thirty beluga whales still live there.
An application to transfer them to a Chinese marine park was rejected after concerns they would return to performing in captivity.
Citing the cost of continuing care after the park is closed, the operators have said, in a letter to the minister of fisheries, their “only options at this point are to either relocate the whales or face the devastating decision of euthanasia”.
Labchuk said it is legal if Marineland doesn’t kill them “in a cruel manner”.
However, she doubts there is a way the whales could be killed “without delving into criminal animal cruelty”.
In recent months, Marineland requested approval from the Canadian government to rehome the belugas across four US institutions in Chicago, Georgia and Connecticut, and one of the SeaWorld parks. Canada’s fisheries minister Joanne Thompson said in January that she would issue the permits for the whales’ move “once final required information is received from Marineland”.
As of April, the park has reportedly requested government loan of between CAD$10 million and $20 million ($10.1 million and $20.3 million) to move the belugas.
From dolphin trainer to whale scientist
Dr Vanessa Pirotta is a whale scientist at Macquarie University in Sydney. Growing up in Canberra, far from the ocean, she was inspired by the 1993 movie Free Willy.
Before becoming a scientist, she worked as dolphin trainer at a facility in Coffs Harbour, on the NSW north coast.
She doesn’t want to see more wild animals captured for facilities like marine parks.
“As a scientist, I don’t agree with the capturing of any further animals into captivity,” she said.
However, Pirrotta said she thought people also tend not to understand that zoos can have an important role in caring for rescued animals, rather than just existing for entertainment.
As a former trainer, Pirotta said it’s important to remember that facilities have a duty to continue providing for animals in their care “so they can see out their life in the best way possible”.
In some extreme cases, she said, euthanasia may be the best option.
“The reality is these animals are also long-lived, which means that a small pool of money may sustain a period of time, but may not be ongoing,” she said.
While lifespans vary between captivity and the wild, Corky, the oldest captive orca is in her late fifties and has lived at SeaWorld San Diego for more than 30 years.
What next for France’s trapped orcas?
In their assessment of potential destinations, the French general inspector for the environment said Wikie and Keijo must be moved in 12 to 18 months to avoid exposing them to “excessive risk”.
That recommendation was given in June 2024.
Now the world is watching to see what the future holds for this mother and son.
Additional reporting by Kathleen Farmilo
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