After receiving numerous and repeated complaints and video evidence from animal welfare advocates about conditions at the Miami Seaquarium, Miami-Dade County building inspectors finally paid a visit in September 2003. The building inspectors spent a total of two days going over the marine park, including a thorough investigation of the stadium where Lolita is housed. While some were shocked by the revelations, this was old news to Lolita's supporters, who have been calling on officials for years to take action.

Lolita, or Tokitae, has been the resident lone Orca at the Miami Seaquarium for the past 33 years. Captured from the wild while swimming with her pod off of Whidbey Island in 1970, Lolita has spent most of her life performing stunts for food and swimming in circles in her tiny enclosure at the Seaquarium. The inadequate size of Lolita's tank has been a central point in advocates' cries to set her free. The tank, in clear violation of the Animal Welfare Act's standards, is only 80 feet long (divided in half by a work station and platform) by 20 feet at its deepest point, providing a wholly inappropriate living space for a marine mammal capable of swimming up to 35 miles an hour and diving up to 500 feet in the sea.

While the recent inspections and safety code violations do not specifically address Lolita or her current living situation, they do shine a spotlight on the failure of the Miami Seaquarium owners to maintain their facilities in a safe condition for park visitors, employees and the animals they keep captive. Among the violations found by the building inspectors were broken railings on all decks and second floor buildings, caved in roofs (including a rusted roof canopy over the whale stadium, cited as "damaged beyond repair"), broken steps and striker plates, unsafe bridges and concrete structures and exposed wiring.

Following the building inspector's report and subsequent media attention, the Miami-Dade fire inspectors decided to pay a long overdue visit to the park after it was discovered that the Miami Seaquarium had not been subject to a single inspection since it opened in 1955. Fire inspectors cited the park for 36 additional safety violations, including an insufficient number of emergency exits in Lolita's stadium and several enclosed buildings that lacked fire alarms.

Typically, inspections of facilities like the Seaquarium are only carried out in the case of complaints or when owners apply for building permits. Even in those cases, only the area in question is inspected and private engineers employed by the facility, not state or federal inspectors, carry out the actual inspections. Clearly, a system where a facility is allowed to self-police, with no additional oversight, does not work.

Even if the Seaquarium is able to bring the facility up to code and add an exit ramp to Lolita's stadium, this will not improve the conditions under which Lolita lives. She will continue to live in isolation, swimming in circles, performing for her food and crying out to her pod mates thousands of miles away.