Twelve dolphins and two orcas are stuck in a closed marine park in France after Spanish authorities refused to grant an import permit to move the animals in two of Spain’s aquariums -and while the option of moving them to a pioneering dolphin sanctuary in Greece remains up in the air since the Greek government keeps delaying issuing an operation permit.
Marineland, a now shuttered marine park in the French Riviera has been desperately looking for a home for its two orcas, Wikie, 24 and her 11-year-old son Keijo and 12 dolphins after a 2024 animal welfare law in the country and declining attendance forced the park to close its doors.
The park’s management had asked two parks in Spain to take in the animals but a Spanish scientific agency that evaluates the suitability of facilities “refuses the transfer,” an official in the French environment ministry said. The Spanish agency concluded that basins in Madrid’s aquarium and Tenerife’s Loro Parque “did not meet minimum standards in terms of area, volume, and depth” for the marine mammals.
“Given that we cannot provide authorization of the animals to be transferred to Spain,” the French Ministry official said. The Marineland owner has been ordered to care for the animals “pending a future solution,” the official said as staff contracts expire this month and there’s no other immediate alternative.
French government visited Greece’s dolphin sanctuary before the marine park in France closed
The idea of sanctuaries for formerly captive marine mammals has been gaining momentum in recent years worldwide as more and marine parks shut down. Agnes Pannier-Runacher, Minister at France’s Ministry for Ecological Transition, has been publicly supporting the creation of sanctuaries in Europe.
In March 2025, she sent an expert to Greece and the island of Lipsi, where the Greek, almost-complete dolphin sanctuary, founded by Archipelagos Institute of Marine Conservation, is located in a remote and peaceful bay away from any human interference. The aim was to witness the progress on site and understand the obstacles that prevent sanctuaries in Greece (and Europe) from becoming a reality. The French ministry said it “wishes to use its full weight to bring the projects currently under development to fruition.”
Lamya Essemlali, President and co-founder of Sea Shepherd France, one of the largest non-profit marine conservation organizations, was also present to assess the project and has been working closely with the French minister on the issue. Essemlali told Greek Reporter at the time that the fate of Marineland’s captive dolphins has become a “personal issue” for the French minister, who “wants to be the minister who wants to offer a better life for those animals.”
“[The minister] wants to coordinate with the Greek government to work together in order to lift the obstacles to this project and I think it would be absolutely amazing for Greece to be the first country in the world that offers to dolphins a way out from the captivity industry, because we know that this industry is dying now and sanctuaries are going to be of essence,” Essemlali says.
While a source in France’s environment ministry told AFP that such projects could not be made operational in less than a year, Archipelagos Institute says the Lipsi dolphin sanctuary needs less time to prepare before welcoming its first dolphins.
“[Once we get the permit], we can become operational in a few months,” Thodoris Tsimpidis, Founder and Head of Conservation Actions of Archipelagos says. “Two thirds of the work have already been done by nature itself and everything is ready.”
Greek government delays issuing the permits to the Lipsi dolphin sanctuary for years
In contrast with France’s interest in the pressing need for the operation of the Archipelagos sanctuary, which has been almost complete for some time, Greece’s Ministry of the Environment and Energy, responsible for issuing the relevant permits, has been failing to do so for seven years.
The issue of the sanctuary’s operation came to the spotlight again, after Attica Park, Greece’s main zoo near Athens, announced on January 22 that it would send five of its captive dolphins to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium in the United States by May 2025. Animal activists in Greece and all over the world have been calling for the animals to be transferred to the Lipsi sanctuary, instead of spending the rest of their lives in another concrete tank.
According to Archipelagos, the institute has been applying for a permit to operate the marine mammal care center, which is a prerequisite in order to get the dolphin sanctuary permit, since 2018. Documents seen by Greek Reporter, reveal that the institute got the first, written response from the ministry six years later and almost five months after the fifth request.
Thodoris Tsimpidis, Founder and Head of Conservation Actions of Archipelagos further says that none of the committee members responsible for the relevant permits have ever visited the sanctuary in Lipsi nor have they requested any information on the project.
In a question by Greek Reporter to Greece’s Ministry of the Environment and Energy in late January 2025 regarding the delays for the dolphin sanctuary and the allegations against some of its employees, the ministry said in a statement that the relevant authorities are looking into the case and that a decision will be made soon. However, Archipelagos says nothing has changed since and they have yet to be contacted by the ministry.
The Clearwater Marine Aquarium has applied for a federal permit to import the dolphins from Greece’s Attica Park under File No. 28233 to be used “for public display.” The application was submitted in December 2024 to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries, an American scientific and regulatory federal agency, which will decide if the United States will accept Greece’s captive dolphins or, if there’s still no other alternative, they will also be stuck in their tank outside Athens.
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