Killer Whale Gets Police Escort Out of Canada

Ikaika the killer whale was escorted out of the country in a procession worthy of a head of state.

A witness said he counted at least 14 Niagara Regional Police cruisers, with lights flashing, two transport trucks and a crane slowly escorting the nine-year-old male orca from Marineland toward Hamilton airport on the QEW on Saturday evening.

John (Ringo) Beam, manager of Rempel Maximum Ice Services in Niagara Falls, said he joked to some of the orca's escorts that the procession from the amusement park around 9 p.m. seemed a tad excessive.

"I said, 'It's a whale, not a head of state,'" Beam said Sunday. "It was overkill."

The departure of Ikaika, also called "Ike," comes at the end of a nasty custody dispute between the Marineland amusement park in Niagara Falls and SeaWorld in Orlando, Fla.

It was unclear on Sunday evening which SeaWorld facility in the U.S. would be Ikaika's new home, although there had been reports he was wanted in San Diego for breeding purposes. SeaWorld has killer whales in its marine parks in Orlando, San Diego and San Antonio.

Marineland had unsuccessfully sought to block the whale's exit to the U.S. by seeking a court injunction last month.

The unsuccessful legal manoeuvre was attempted after the provincial appeals court upheld a lower court's decision ordering Marineland to return Ikaika to SeaWorld, the whale's original owners.

Marineland had custody of Ikaika as part of what court papers called a "breeding loan agreement" between the two parks.

John Holer, Marineland's owner, and SeaWorld officials could not be reached for comment Sunday.

Holer had unsuccessfully argued in court filings that Ikaika was a rightful resident of Marineland for his lifetime.

Ikaika arrived at Marineland in 2006 in a swap for four belugas. At the time, there were hopes that he would breed with Athena, a female killer whale, but Athena died in 2009.

That left just Ikaika and Kiska, a 37-year-old female, and Ikaika made it clear he wasn't romantically drawn to the older female whale.

In its fight to keep Ikaika in Canada, Marineland had sought damages greater than $75,000 and had requested a trial by jury.

Beam said he got wind that something was afoot a couple of weeks ago, when a caller asked if he could sell a large quantity of ice late on a Saturday afternoon.

The caller phoned back several times, and was strangely vague about the need for the ice, Beam said. The caller said he would pick it up with a transport truck late on Saturday afternoon.

Beam said it wasn't worth his while to open his business on Saturday for the sale, but his curiosity was piqued.

He drove to a Canadian Tire outlet in Niagara Falls that also sold bulk ice on Saturday to watch the deal go down, as a worker from a specialty transport trucking firm purchased more than 236 kg of ice to cool the water holding the 1,815 kg orca.

Then he tailed the truck to Marineland, where his presence brought questioning from the whale's police escorts. "I was there for about three hours," Beam said. "I had six cruisers around my car."

Niagara Regional Police spokesperson Nilan Dave said the officers were part of a private escort detail, meaning it wasn't taxpayer-funded.