A Billionaire Wants to Fly a Captive Orca to Freedom on a C-130
A captive orca may soon be going home thanks to a complex rescue mission involving a billionaire, a cargo plane, and a watery life support system.
Tokitae, also known as Toki or Lolita, is expected to be released from her tiny enclosure in the Miami Seaquarium. But getting the orca back to a bay near Seattle will be no easy task. She’ll have to be flown 2,700 miles across the United States, possibly in a C-130 Hercules cargo plane.
“She's healthy, I’ve got the money, let’s move her,’ Jim Irsay, the wealthy owner and CEO of the Indianapolis Colts, who is funding the rescue, said recently.
Activists have led the charge to send Tokitae back to the wild. The 21-foot orca currently lives in one of the world’s smallest pens for “killer whales,” an 80x35 foot pool. Friends of Toki, a group devoted to the orca’s welfare, said on its website that Toki was reported to be in ill health, and that reports issued in 2021 and early 2022 suggested she was gravely ill.
“In their natural homes, orcas and other dolphins swim several dozen miles a day and dive to great depths below the surface of their native waters, animal rights group PETA said in a news release. “Holding them captive for our amusement is a form of speciesism—a human-supremacist worldview—and it must end.”
The orca will be put in a glass tank at the Miami Seaquarium and then taken on a long journey. First, the tank will be placed on a truck to Miami airport. From there, it will be loaded onto a large cargo plane, and Toki will fly with her caretakers for 2,700 miles to the Seattle Airport. Finally, she will be driven to her new home in the Salish Sea, where she will be cared for during her transition back to the wild.
If Toki does fly on a C-130, also known as the Hercules, she will do so on an iconic aircraft. The C-130 is a four-engine military transport aircraft developed by Lockheed Martin. It was first introduced in the 1950s and has become one of the world’s most widely used military transport planes.
The ability of the Hercules to operate from short and unimproved runways, combined with its large payload capacity and endurance, makes it a reliable choice for rescue and humanitarian missions. A C-130 was used in the recent search for survivors of the underwater mission to The Titanic.
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