Lolita, also called Tokitae[6] or Toki for short, (c. 1966 – August 18, 2023),[3] was a captive female orca of the southern resident population captured from the wild in September 1970 and displayed at the Miami Seaquarium in Florida.

[19] The Lummi Nation of Washington refers to her as Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut, or, a female orca from an ancestral site in the Penn Cove area of the Salish Sea bioregion.

[24] Hugo appeared to suffer from a form of psychosis endemic in captive whales, and often rammed his head against the tank walls; he died in 1980 at 15 years old[2] of a brain aneurysm.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspection report released a month later listed multiple serious problems with the conditions in which Lolita was held.

[32][33][10][11] In a joint official statement, the partners in the agreement declared, "Returning Lolita to her home waters does not mean releasing her into the open ocean.

[35] Jason Colby, historian and author of a book on captured orcas, including Lolita,[38] cautioned against unreasonable expectations for a release back into the wild after decades in captivity.

The container would then have gone onto a plane to Bellingham, Washington, from where it would be loaded onto a barge to transport her over water to a sea pen at a private location for the rest of her life.

[32] Collaborating with The Dolphin Company, the multi-faceted Friends of Toki (formerly Friends of Lolita) organization includes marine mammal scientists Diana Reiss and Roger Payne, Lummi elder Squil-le-he-le (Raynell Morris), Charles Vinick of the Whale Sanctuary Project, and Florida Keys developer[36] and philanthropist Pritam Singh.

"[31] As reported by the USDA in 2021, Lolita contracted a significant long-term illness before the Miami Seaquarium came under the management of The Dolphin Company,[44][31] and she had a lesion on her lung.

[45] In addition to "feeding the highest quality salmon, herring, and capelin available on the market from 2023 catches," Lolita's care team had been introducing a small percentage of squid to her daily diet to benefit her gastrointestinal tract.

Trainers had been planning for Lolita's eventual move by shifting her activities away from performing tricks and stunts towards conditioning exercise to raise her fitness level.

On October 17, the Miami Seaquarium released a statement that according to the necropsy report the orca's cause of death was due to a "progression of multiple chronic conditions including renal disease and pneumonia,".

"[56] World Animal Protection US's executive director Lindsay Oliver released a statement, saying "She deserved the freedom of the open sea, not a life confined to a small tank.

[22] In 2003, she was the subject of the documentary Lolita: Slave to Entertainment,[59][60] in which many anti-captivity activists, most notably Ric O'Barry (former Flipper dolphin trainer), argued against the conditions of her captivity and expressed a hope that she might be re-introduced to the wild.

[65][66][67] On January 17, 2015, thousands of protesters from all over the world gathered outside the Miami Seaquarium to demand Lolita's release and asked other supporters worldwide to tweet "#FreeLolita" on Twitter.

[69] In 2018 the Lummi Nation traveled to the Seaquarium with a totem pole carved for Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut (their name for Lolita), sang to her, and prayed that she would be returned to the Salish Sea.

According to journalist Lynda Mapes, "The Seaquarium would not allow tribal members any closer than the public sidewalk outside the facility where the whale performs twice a day for food.

"[71] On September 24, 2020, the 50th anniversary of Lolita's arrival at the Seaquarium, tribal members of the Lummi Nation, joined by the local Seminole, traveled to Miami again, held a ceremony in support of Sk'aliCh'elh-tenaut, and demanded she be released to her native waters.

[72] Some, such as the director of the University of British Columbia's Marine Mammal Research Unit, Andrew Trites, argued that Lolita was too old for life in the wild and that reintroducing her to the ocean after over fifty years in captivity would be "unethical" and a "death sentence".

[73] However, other environmental scholars have posited that such arguments are representative of colonial conservation policies, stating that "The whales were killed and captured one at a time by settlers.

[33][74] In November 2011, the Animal Legal Defense Fund (ALDF), PETA, and three individuals filed a lawsuit against the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to end the exclusion of Lolita from the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of the Pacific Northwest's southern resident orcas.

[77] On March 18, 2014, a judge dismissed ALDF's case challenging Miami Seaquarium's Animal Welfare Act license to display captive orcas.

[78] In June 2014, ALDF filed a notice of appeal of the District Court decision that found the USDA had not violated the law when it renewed Miami Seaquarium's AWA exhibitor license.