Future care of Orca whale at Miami’s Seaquarium subject of legal dispute

Lolita, a captive orca that has spent more than four decades in an aquarium tank, will be granted the same endangered species protection as her wild relatives, US officials said.

Advocates hope Wednesday's ruling will lead to her release from the Miami Seaquarium, but the matter of Lolita's care remains at the centre of an impassioned legal dispute.

She was captured as a juvenile from the waters off the western US state of Washington in 1970, along with six other calves that were sent to marine parks around the country.

The now 3,200kg Lolita is the only one of that group still alive. She is believed to be the oldest captive orca in the United States.

Her wild relatives, known as the Southern Resident killer whales, were given endangered species protection by the US government a decade ago.

There are only 78 individuals left in the Pacific Ocean off the northwestern United States and Canada, said Will Stelle, who is the regional administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (Noaa) Fisheries West Coast region.

Their protected status, from 2005, did not however apply to all orcas in US waters or those in captivity. Animal rights groups petitioned Noaa to revise the endangered listing and to remove the exclusion of captive whales from the description.