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A Puget Sound Orca in Captivity: The Fight To Bring Lolita Home
On August 8, 1970, the Southern Resident orcas of Puget Sound were herded into Penn Cove on Whidbey Island by explosives, spotter planes and speedboats in a coordinated effort to capture seven young whales. Between 1964 and 1976, dozens of these now-endangered orcas were torn from their home and sent to marine parks around the globe. Just over a decade later, all but one had died. This lone survivor is Tokitae, also known as Lolita, and she's spent most of her life performing at the Miami Seaquarium. For twenty years, the Orca Network has called for her release, and now the indigenous Lummi Nation, People of the Sea, have joined the fight. Author Sandra Pollard chronicles the extraordinary effort to bring Tokitae home.
- GenresAnimalsNonfictionNature
163 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2019
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148 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
July 21, 2021
I've been on an orca kick (which is obvious if you have been following my recent reads), and this one caught my attention because it's part of an ongoing controversy. Lolita/Tokitae was taken from the Puget Sound when she was young, and has been performing in Florida ever since. This book follows her story, including attempts over the past few decades to have her released back to her native pod.
January 31, 2021
Utterly phenomenal. Required reading for anyone who cares about Tokitae and her history
September 26, 2021
As of 2021, the campaign to free Lolita carries on.
While I appreciate the efforts to free Tokitae, the book itself is just too disjointed and chaotic, with quite a lot of unnecessary information randomly thrown in. I expected more about Tokitae, a more in-depth look (with interviews and such, like Colby's Orca) - but Pollard's book is mostly sourced from news that can be accessed online. Still, I think it's a decent enough read for those interested in cetacean captivity and activism.
Further reading:
Puget Sound Whales for Sale:
Beneath the Surface
Death at Seaworld
Freeing Keiko
Operation Orca
Of Orcas and Men
While I appreciate the efforts to free Tokitae, the book itself is just too disjointed and chaotic, with quite a lot of unnecessary information randomly thrown in. I expected more about Tokitae, a more in-depth look (with interviews and such, like Colby's Orca) - but Pollard's book is mostly sourced from news that can be accessed online. Still, I think it's a decent enough read for those interested in cetacean captivity and activism.
Further reading:
Puget Sound Whales for Sale:
Beneath the Surface
Death at Seaworld
Freeing Keiko
Operation Orca
Of Orcas and Men
August 3, 2025
Pollard deserves nothing but praise for this incredibly detailed timeline of events. It's easy to follow but remains thorough. A must-read for those interested in the potential plan to release Lolita before her death in 2023.
January 17, 2021
Another good read. Factual and informative. Again you can tell the author has a deep love for Lolita and it is carried across in her writing style. Have read both books back to back and will probably revisit them again
June 10, 2023
This is the story of efforts up to 2019 to bring Tokitae aka Lolita back to the Salish Sea from a "seaquariam" in Miami.
November 26, 2025
This slim book tells the heartbreaking story of Tokitae/Lolita, the orca that was captured in 1970 in Washington state in the infamous Penn Cove roundup and sold to the Miami Seaquarium, where she spent decades trapped in a too-small tank, exposed to burning sun and storms, and forced to perform tricks multiple times a day. Since I live in Seattle and am a self-described "whale nerd," I was already familiar with Tokitae's sad story, but this book gave me more details and brought me to tears on multiple occasions.
That said, it's not a great book on other levels, which is why it gets only two stars from me. Although the arc of the story is clear enough, I found some things hard to follow, mostly because Pollard introduces so many people and organizations and then expects the reader to remember who they all are many pages later. After the first mention, she simply calls people by their last names and organizations by their acronyms, and I often found myself flipping back through the book to look for the first mention, usually unsuccessfully. An index would have helped, but there is none.
The other thing that got on my nerves was that almost every time Pollard introduced a new person, she included a bunch of extra information that was completely extraneous and pointless. One example is when she introduces Susan Berta, one half of the couple behind the nonprofit organization Orca Network, along with her husband, Howard Garrett, who features prominently in the book. Pollard basically gives us her life story, including wedding date, parents and number of siblings, where she grew up, and where she went to college, before getting to the only relevant things, which are how she came to care about orcas, how she learned about Tokitae/Lolita's plight, and what her role has been in the fight to set her free.
Even less relevant are all the unnecessary biographical details about celebrities and other people who show up once in the book, very briefly. For example: "One big name who showed interest in supporting the Lolita campaign was British singer-songwriter/pianist Sir Elton John. Born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on March 25, 1947, he later changed his name to Elton Hercules John and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998 for services to pop music and charity." With all due respect to Elton John, a brief "British pop-rock superstar" or "British music icon" would have sufficed. Who cares about any of the rest of it?
I may be ranting, but I found that all this extraneous nonsense, combined with the confusion caused by the lack of an index to help keep track of people/acronyms, seriously detracted from my reading experience.
That said, I do think this is an important read because it clearly portrays what a tragedy it is for wild animals as large and intelligent as whales to be held captive (under any conditions and especially in inadequate environments) and forced to perform tricks for the enjoyment of human beings. The Penn Cove roundup was a tragedy especially for the whales that were captured but also for those that were not, because Tokitae/Lolita came from a unique population of orcas with strong family bonds and a distinct culture (they eat only salmon, as opposed to other ecotypes of orcas that hunt marine mammals), and the loss of one of their members left emotional scars on the whole Southern Resident orca population -- a population that currently numbers only 74 individuals and is listed as endangered, in part because of the loss of genetic diversity caused by the capture era, which has contributed to high calf mortality. That the captures left emotional scars is supported by the fact that Tokitae/Lolita's pod avoided Penn Cove, where the 1970 captures took place and which they formerly visited regularly, for decades. Their first documented return was not until November 24, 2024 -- 54 years after the captures.
That said, it's not a great book on other levels, which is why it gets only two stars from me. Although the arc of the story is clear enough, I found some things hard to follow, mostly because Pollard introduces so many people and organizations and then expects the reader to remember who they all are many pages later. After the first mention, she simply calls people by their last names and organizations by their acronyms, and I often found myself flipping back through the book to look for the first mention, usually unsuccessfully. An index would have helped, but there is none.
The other thing that got on my nerves was that almost every time Pollard introduced a new person, she included a bunch of extra information that was completely extraneous and pointless. One example is when she introduces Susan Berta, one half of the couple behind the nonprofit organization Orca Network, along with her husband, Howard Garrett, who features prominently in the book. Pollard basically gives us her life story, including wedding date, parents and number of siblings, where she grew up, and where she went to college, before getting to the only relevant things, which are how she came to care about orcas, how she learned about Tokitae/Lolita's plight, and what her role has been in the fight to set her free.
Even less relevant are all the unnecessary biographical details about celebrities and other people who show up once in the book, very briefly. For example: "One big name who showed interest in supporting the Lolita campaign was British singer-songwriter/pianist Sir Elton John. Born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on March 25, 1947, he later changed his name to Elton Hercules John and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1998 for services to pop music and charity." With all due respect to Elton John, a brief "British pop-rock superstar" or "British music icon" would have sufficed. Who cares about any of the rest of it?
I may be ranting, but I found that all this extraneous nonsense, combined with the confusion caused by the lack of an index to help keep track of people/acronyms, seriously detracted from my reading experience.
That said, I do think this is an important read because it clearly portrays what a tragedy it is for wild animals as large and intelligent as whales to be held captive (under any conditions and especially in inadequate environments) and forced to perform tricks for the enjoyment of human beings. The Penn Cove roundup was a tragedy especially for the whales that were captured but also for those that were not, because Tokitae/Lolita came from a unique population of orcas with strong family bonds and a distinct culture (they eat only salmon, as opposed to other ecotypes of orcas that hunt marine mammals), and the loss of one of their members left emotional scars on the whole Southern Resident orca population -- a population that currently numbers only 74 individuals and is listed as endangered, in part because of the loss of genetic diversity caused by the capture era, which has contributed to high calf mortality. That the captures left emotional scars is supported by the fact that Tokitae/Lolita's pod avoided Penn Cove, where the 1970 captures took place and which they formerly visited regularly, for decades. Their first documented return was not until November 24, 2024 -- 54 years after the captures.
April 23, 2024
Tokitae you deserved so much better , this book is a must read for all orca lovers especially if you love Southern Residents. So many wonderful people are mentioned in this book and fought so hard for Tokitae along with other cetaceans in captivity. It will bring out feelings of outrage, disgust, disappointment, heartbreak and sadness. The author did a phenomenal job of telling Tokitae’s life story, it was so easy and natural to feel connected to Tokitae even though she’s passed while reading it . A informative read that also captures your feelings and heart.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 16, 2024
Oof, what a slog. The whole thing is written as a sort of odd mix of narrative and newspaper article intertwined. You're expected to remember people who are referenced by only their first or last name from several chapters ago and the author used terms that must be common to those with a particular interest in marine mammals, but weren't to me.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews