These two memorials are some of the many events that honor Tokitae. FILE - A look at southern resident orca Tokitae, also known as Lolita, who died at the Miami Seaquarium on Aug. 18, 2023.

Tokitae was the last surviving orca of the whales that were captured from Puget Sound and sold into captivity. She was violently taken from her pod in August 1970 near Whidbey Island's Penn Cove.

Tokitae died on Aug. 18 in Miami, shocking the Lummi and other Washingtonians who had been working to return her home after 53 years in captivity.

Tokitae was captured off Whidbey island in 1970 and spent the last 53 years of her life in captivity. With her dying before returning home, many said she never got the chance she deserved.

When Tokitae arrived at the Seaquarium she was put into a tank with Hugo, another orca who was captured from the Puget Sound a year and a half before she was. They lived in what was called a ...

Tokitae, the performing orca known as Lolita at Miami’s Seaquarium, is shown with a trainer in 2011. (Andy Blackledge/Flickr) The orca has become the symbol of the Pacific Northwest, perhaps ...

MIAMI — Tokitae's cause of death was revealed to be the worsening of renal disease and pneumonia due to old age, according to a new autopsy report released by Miami Seaquarium on Tuesday. Dr ...

Tokitae’s body was trucked that evening from Florida to the University of Georgia where it was cut into pieces and placed in 20 50-gallon barrels, and the larger bones put in bins with the goal ...

But he says there will also be a celebration of Tokitae’s life that will be open to the public at Jackson Beach Park in Friday Harbor Sunday from noon to 3 p.m.

Yet, Tokitae’s return won’t satisfy that debt and won’t end our responsibility to her, her pod or the Salish Sea’s resident and transient orcas.

Tokitae was cremated after her necropsy, and her ashes — some 300 pounds of them — were flown back home for a private Lummi ceremony returning her to her home waters.