COUNTDOWN: One week until West Seattle Summer Fest. This year, celebrate Springer the orca!

| West Seattle festivals | West Seattle news | Whales

Before the night ends, we need to remind you that West Seattle Summer Fest is now only a week away – Friday-Sunday, July 15-17, in the heart of The Junction. Tonight’s preview: Celebrating Springer at Summer Fest! It’s part of a Junction Association partnership with The Whale Trail for this year’s festival, explained as follows:

Springer is a Northern Resident orca who was discovered near West Seattle in 2002, lost, alone and 300 miles away from home. Later that summer she was rescued, rehabilitated and returned to her family on the north end of Vancouver Island. Today she is thriving with two calves of her own – it’s the only successful orca reunion in history!

The West Seattle Junction Association and The Whale Trail are teaming up to celebrate Springer’s success with family-friendly activities at Summer Fest.

Follow The Whale Trail in The Junction – look for orcas in local stores! We will have a Whale Trail table on Summer Fest Eve on Thursday the 14th where kids can pick up a map of where the Orcas will be in the Junction. They find them and merchants will sign the map. On Friday-Sunday the maps will be at the Info Booth (California/Alaska). Bring the completed list back to the Junction Info booth at the festival and kids will get a ticket for each Orca they found. They take the tickets to the Orca presentations below for a chance to win an orca-themed prize.

The Whale Trail will present 3 PM showings of “Orca Rescue! The true story of an orphaned orca named Springer” on Saturday and Sunday at the Senior Center. Hear Springer’s story and learn how you can help orcas today. All events are free and family-friendly. Hope to see you there!

Full festival details are on the official Summer Fest website. Our previous previews:
–Overview of what’s new/different this year
–Music lineup
–Kids’ Zone
–Summer Fest Eve

anonyme July 9, 2022 (5:57 am)

Bring Lolita home.

Donna, The Whale Trail July 9, 2022 (10:22 am)

In 1996 we came closer to freeing Lolita than anyone ever has, Anonyme. We hosted a symposium and launched a campaign that persuaded the Seaquarium to consider a proposal for her release. That chance was doomed when the primary authors of the proposal used it as a fundraising opportunity for themselves, and the Seaquarium rejected it as such.

A few years later we put the lessons we learned organizing for Lolita to good use for Springer. Based on my experience with both, there are two hurdles for Lolita’s release: persuading the Seaquarium that it is in their and Lolita’s best interest, and persuading NOAA (and DFO) that this is a risk worth taking for Lolita, the southern residents, and their agencies. Hope you will consider attending the presentation and we could talk about this in person.

anonyme July 9, 2022 (1:27 pm)

Donna, I think we may have had a chat a few years ago, either at a festival or the demonstration at Alki. It breaks my heart to think that Lolita will probably die in that horrible pool where she has spent most of her life. If only humans were intelligent enough to understand orcaspeak, especially the L-pod dialect, I’m sure Lolita would say she’d rather spend her remaining years (short or long) in her native waters with her few remaining relatives. If only Seaquarium would realize that her release would make for tremendously positive publicity by actually showing compassion rather than exploitation.

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