Lolita is the last survivor from the dozen years or so that Southern Residents were captured in Puget Sound, a practice that ended with the lawsuit filed by Washington State against SeaWorld in 1975. Those eleven years of captures made possible captive-orca displays like those at SeaWorld and Miami Seaquarium. In the process, some 47 whales were removed from the Southern Resident population, more than a third of the total. The population has never fully recovered; nearly a whole generation of reproduction was represented in the whales captured and killed.
47 whales removed from southern or a resident population (more than 1/3 of original total population) in 11 years of capture program
