Letters to Get Lost Magazine

With friends like that, Who needs enemies?

Hey, Get Lost:

I just found your magazine on-line, and its articles about Lolita the Killer Whale. My son & I are season pass holders to Miami Seaquarium and go there on a regular basis. So we were at the park during the protest on Mother's day, and I have to disagree with several things that you mentioned in the article.

First of all, 200 people is quite the overstatement. I counted 57 people at the height of the demonstration. Secondly, I was in the park before the demonstration and saw the whale show at 11:30. The show was not canceled, just a bit earlier than usual. I also saw your friend at the 4:25 whale show. She was leaning over with a sign and her ridiculous hat looked ready to fly off of her head and into the pool. The folks reacted to her as they react to anyone they see getting too close to the animal, they were protecting Lolita. Was there reaction extreme? Possibly, but if they do not take those actions, and someone tries to harm the whale as a result, that is much worse in my opinion.

My son Justin loves Miami Seaquarium, loves the whale, and loves the manatees that you seemed to sneer at in your article. And when you consider that Lolita is still alive after all of these years, why does it never come to mind that Seaquarium must be doing something right. Thank you for your attention.

Preston Andrews

The attendance count was organizer Howie Garrett's. It included people who showed up and left and were replaced by others. The numbers changed throughout the demonstration.

Thanks for the correction on the show time... according to a few sources inside the Seaquarium, not only was her 12:40 show moved to 11:30, but her usual 4:25 show, which you say you saw Sandy Taylor at, was pushed up to 3:35.

Sandy, who went in to show Lolita the picture, was hardly a threat to the whale (picture a medium height woman at an armpit-high glass wall) but certainly a threat to the aquarium's image, enough to get her hustled out of the place. She tells me that they told her this: "you can't have a sign in here because we had a demo today and we allow no signs in here and you must leave the park." People go up to the tank between performances to be near the animals all the time and in this instance there were also a couple families there. And, yes, I agree, it would be dreadful if someone hurt Lolita in her tank, but that's probably not what the trainers were worried about with Sandy.

I didn't sneer at the manatees, animals I happen to be very fond of. (I save my sneers for rare appearances of performance artists on our local PBS channel.) The tanks that they're kept in are horrific. Sprinkled with iceberg lettuce (like this resembles their native flora?), a large number of manatees floated like logs in round concrete tanks so small I wouldn't have wanted to see ONE manatee in it, much less four. Yes, I know the manatees are recovering from injury there. But some have been in those tanks for YEARS. The conditions there mortified me worse than the Killer whale stadium did.

And I will give the Seaquarium its due: Unlike many seaquariums, Miami Seaquarium pipes in and chills real sea water to her tank, which I'm sure has a positive impact on the relatively good health Lolita experiences today as a captive marine mammal. For the conditions she lives in (compare her tank to any of the other facilities in the U.S., and also to the wild), she is very well-tended. I've never met a trainer who didn't feel a strong attachment to the animals they work with.

If your son Justin loves whales and manatees, perhaps your next field trip together should be to see them in the wild. It's logistically not as easy as a trip to Key Biscayne, but on the water you will be seeing the true essence of the animal in its own habitat. Manatees are native to parts of Florida, so that expedition might be easily possible. Wild Killer whales are farther away, but whales are a blast to see; their speed and power and group behaviors are something neither of you will ever forget, and also will give you a very clear picture of what Lolita is missing. If you get to the Pacific Northwest, contact the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands and ask them to recommend a way to get out on the water and see them. Hell, email me and I'll go with you. You'll probably be looking at Lolita's extended family, and you and your son will be able to better empathize on how Lolita's abduction at six years old must have affected them so many years ago.

Sex or Predation? Hell, Don't Ask a Scientist.

(This is from Martha Jordan, who offers us a deep investigative piece on animal crackers this month.)

Hey, Get Lost:

Another picture. Can you believe that I finally found evidence of active predation within a large herd. This also shows how incredibly strong the cat predators are.

Martha Jordan
marthaj@premier1.net

Martha, Martha, Martha. The photograph you sent is NOT depicting active predation. It is something else entirely. Even our friend biker kEN can tell you that, and he's about as thick as they come.

-Your very embarrassed editor.