From the Niagara Falls Review (includes a video): Ikaika is back home. The killer whale, the one at the heart of a custody battle between Marineland and SeaWorld, was removed from the Niagara Falls amusement park Saturday night by a fleet of transport trucks, a crane and more than a dozen Niagara Regional Police escorts…
From The Orlando Sentinel (via Canada.com): A 9-year-old killer whale at the center of an international custody dispute between a Canadian marine park and industry giant SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment was transferred to SeaWorld San Diego over the weekend. The overnight transport took place Saturday evening, just 24 hours after a U.S. judge denied a…
From the Niagara Falls Review: Lawyers for Marineland hoped an 11th hour temporary injunction would block the return of one of its two killer whales to SeaWorld Friday. The injunction, however, was denied by a U.S. district court judge and that led to the dramatic transport of the 1,815-kilogram killer whale Ikaika Saturday night. More…
The rest of the posts today, and a couple tomorrow will be on the news that Marineland shipped Ikaika back to SeaWorld San Diego. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If Marineland loses all of their Killer Whales (if Kiska dies), it will be a huge loss! Whale leaves Marineland for San…
From the Orlando Sentinel: The Canadian theme park Marineland has sued SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment in U.S. court, in the latest chapter of an international custody battle over a killer whale. In its lawsuit, filed last week in Orlando, Marineland asks a federal court judge to issue an injunction that would prevent SeaWorld from retaking…
From the Toronto Star: One spring day in 1963, John Holer, the owner of Marineland, found himself on a Lake Ontario beach in a struggle with a 100-pound sea lion. Jeff, a sea lion that had escaped from Holer’s animal park in Niagara Falls three days earlier, sunk its teeth into Holer’s bicep as it…
From the Toronto Star: Ontario’s Court of Appeal has upheld a lower court decision ordering Marineland to return a killer whale to the Florida water park that loaned it out. In July, an Ontario Superior Court judge ordered the Niagara Falls amusement park to return Ikaika, a 9-year-old male orca, to SeaWorld, the Orlando, Fla.-based…
A couple of unrelated thoughts from Marineland… I’ve been to Marineland a few times this year, and we’ve spent a lot of time at Friendship Cove where the Orca whales are kept. We watched the splash show a couple of weeks ago, and the last time we were there we went to the underwater viewing…
Do you know who Spandy Andy is? I didn’t until a few days ago. he is a guy who wears a full body bright spandex suit and dances. He performs on the street, tried out for So You Think You Can Dance Canada, and apparently even has a gig at Marineland. I’m not really a…
Yesterday afternoon I went to Marineland with my family. We were there a month or so ago, but before that it had been a couple of years. I was surprised at how busy it was on a Tuesday afternoon. The parking lot certainly wasn’t full (if you haven’t been, their parking lot is HUGE), but…