The French government recently announced it has greenlit a plan to send its last captive cetaceans — two orcas and 12 dolphins — to zoos and entertainment parks in Spain. These cetaceans live in the Marineland Antibes park on the French Riviera, which closed in 2025. In 2021, France passed a law banning the breeding and keeping of cetaceans in captivity for entertainment shows, which will come into effect on Dec. 2, 2026. The orcas and dolphins at Marineland were the primary draw for visitors. The two orcas (Orcinus orca), Wikie, aged 25, and her son, Keijo, aged 12, were born at Marineland Antibes on the French Riviera and spent all their lives in concrete tanks and performing in display shows. They will now be moved to Loro Parque, a zoo and entertainment park in Tenerife on the Canary Islands. The dolphins will be split up between two parks in Valencia and Málaga on the Spanish mainland, with plans for some of them to return to France’s Beauval Zoo, when it’s ready to have them, according to reporting by Le Monde. A court-appointed expert team found in February 2026 that the concrete tanks in which the orcas lived at Marineland Antibes were in advanced structural decline, and if the mammals weren’t moved soon, they would have to be euthanized. “Faced with this emergency, we are acting to avert the worst,” Mathieu Lefèvre, France’s minister delegate for ecological transition, said in a statement, explaining the rationale for the decision. “Loro Parque…This article was originally published on Mongabay