Cousteau joins campaign to have Morgan the orca freed

The son of the world’s most famous marine biologist, Jacques Cousteau, is campaigning to have ‘Dutch’ orca Morgan released back into the wild.


On November 1, Amsterdam district court will hear an appeal against the ruling transferring Morgan, found in the Wadden Sea in a severely weakened state in 2010, to a Spanish amusement park. Morgan has been at the Loro Parque on Tenerife since late 2011.
‘We need to put Morgan back in the ocean,’ Jean-Michel Cousteau said at the screening of a film about his father. ‘We need to get off our ass and campaign as far as we can with as many people as we can to convince the judges.’
Cousteau said he would also be at the Amsterdam court hearing in November.
Morgan’s move to the Loro Parque was opposed by activitists who said she should be released back into the wild. But junior environment minister Henk Bleker granted an export licence, saying it was too risky to set the orca free.

More on Cousteau’s involvement

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