Tiller’s Folly and The Wilds have released a new song to help free an orca at an oceanarium in Florida.
Called Bring Lolita Home, the song calls attention to a captive orca named Lolita at Seaquarium in Miami.
The Orca Network, a non-profit organization based in Freeland, Wash. that raises awareness about the whales of the Pacific Northwest, says that Lolita was captured at Penn Cove in Washington State on August 8, 1970.
The network website explains how the orca, along with 100 other members of the Southern Resident Killer Whale community were herded into a three-acre net by explosives, speedboats and an airplane. Calves were separated from their mothers and that as many as five orcas died that day.
From that group, seven juvenile orcas were delivered to marine parks around the world.
By 1987, all had died in captivity except Lolita.
Tiller’s Folly, The Wilds, along with Spirit Media have joined to create a new cultural initiative called Voices for the Salish Sea.
The goal of the group is to raise awareness about watershed and ocean stewardship, restore wild Pacific salmon runs and their habitats, share stories about the history of Indigenous people and the European settlers who built the communities around the Salish Sea and save orcas in the wild along with freeing them from captivity.
The Salish Sea is the official name given to the coastal waters off the south coast of British Columbia, including the Puget Sound, The Juan de Fuca Strait and the Strait of Georgia.
Bring Lolita Home is the first project for the group.
Bruce Coughlan, with Tiller’s Folly and a Maple Ridge resident, explains that the idea started with the group’s fiddle player, Nolan Murray.
“He got involved in the marine whale stranding network and he studied to become a first responder for stranded marine animals,” said Coughlan.
Murray also became involved with the Orca Network.
One of the goals of network is to get Lolita released and transport her back to a seapen at Eastsound, Orcas Island in Washington, where she would be rehabilitated and released back into the wild.
“She’s just over 50 years old. All the research shows she could be rehabilitated and returned to her family,” said Coughlan, adding that the conditions of her captivity are horrible.
“It’s just horrible house and such a small place they keep her in,” he continued.
Animal activist groups including the Orca Network and PETA, complain that Lolita, whose original name is Tokitae, lives by herself in an enclosure the size of a hotel swimming pool. The tank is only one-and-a-half times her size and it is one of the smallest and oldest in North America. Her last tank-mate, Hugo, died in 1980.
Coughlan wrote the song for Lolita two years ago.
He had kept tabs on the orca’s story “at arms-length” through Murray.
“Then one day his wife was telling me about Lolita and I kind of off-handedly said somebody should write a song. So she thrust a pen and paper in my hand, pushed me out the back door and locked it,” he laughed.
Twenty minutes later he had the first draft.
Coughlan has been a full-time professional musician for 40 years. He has most recently emerged as a solo artist and will start recording his new album, called Waiting For Rain, the second week of April.
He will continue to play with Tiller’s Folly, which is celebrating 20 years together, but his attitude has changed towards music.
“It wasn’t until recently that I discovered how powerful music really is. And I thought this would be a good opportunity to see if music could exact social change,” said Coughlan.
The band released a video for the song on Feb. 15 and started passing it around to friends.
Since then the video has been seen more than 30,000 times.
Right now the group is simply trying to raise awareness for Lolita and other cetaceans being kept in captivity.
Originally the group wanted to get other musicians involved by getting them to do their own version of the song, but it didn’t catch on.
However, members are hoping that when more people become involved in the fight for Lolita’s release from captivity that they will be able to piece together another video of other musicians’ take on Bring Lolita Home.
The Miracle March for Lolita takes place on April 1 in Miami, Fla., with solidarity events taking place in Seattle, Washington, Newport Beach, California, Las Vegas, Nevada and Portsmouth, New Hampshire.
On March 31, there will also be a march for her freedom in London, England.
On April 1, Coughlan, Murray and the Whiskey Minstrels will be performing at Kingfisher’s Waterfront Bar and Grill in Maple Ridge at 7:30 p.m., when they will be doing a special performance of Bring Lolita Home.
• For information about the Orca Network and Lolita’s plight, go to orcanetwork.org.