Protesters joined The Orca Network, with special guest Ric O’Barry – star of the Oscar award-winning movie “The Cove” – aboard, in Coupeville, Sunday, Aug. 8, to commemorate the capture site of killer whale Lolita, the sole survivor of several killer whales captured in Penn Cove. Also remembered were the several other whales killed during the capture.Forty years ago this month, killer whale herders violently took Lolita, now aged 45, from her family in Puget Sound and transferred her to a 20-foot-deep tank at the Miami Seaquarium.Only four times her size at its widest point, Lolita’s tank faces imminent danger of oil and dispersant from the Deepwater Horizon spill, as predicted by NOAA. A proposed retirement plan for Lolita would place her in a transitional coastal sea pen sanctuary in her native waters, where she would be rehabilitated under human care, then given the choice to go back to open waters if she so desires and can safely do so. Along with The Orca Network, many other organizations are willing to help implement this plan, but Seaquarium’s owners have thus far rejected the idea, despite added urgency from the recent oil spill in the Gulf.According to the Orca Network, local Orca pods have never returned to Penn Cove since the brutal capture 40 years ago.Photos and reporting by Carmen Daye Irish.Published on August 9, 2010