#stokkseyri
Gender:Female
Pod:N/A
Place of Capture: Stokkseyri, Iceland
Date of Capture: October 1982
Age at Capture: Approx. 1 year
Sometime in October 1982, a group of five whales were captured off the coast of Stokkseyri, Iceland. They were immediately transferred to the Hafnarfjordur Aquarium where they were trained and put up for sale.
By March of 1983, a young female, later known as Freya, was purchased by Marineland Antibes in France, along with Kim II - a male she had been captured with. When they arrived at the park, they met Betty, the resident female who displaced Freya and showed dominance over her. However, they soon began to get along until Betty’s death in 1987, resulting in Freya becoming the dominant whale at the park.
In 1986, Freya had Pleurisy (inflammation of the tissues that line the lungs and chest cavity). While having x-rays taken, she suffered a radiation burn that took 3 years to heal and left a permanent, circular white scar.
Marineland soon purchased two new whales named Sharkan and Tanouk in 1990. Freya was pregnant by Kim II before they arrived, but in 1991, Freya delivered a stillborn. She had another stillborn in 1993, and was put on medication due to possible depression caused by the loss of her calves. The same year, Sharkan gave birth to a female calf named Shouka.
In February of 1996, Freya gave birth to her first and only live calf, a male named Valentin whom she was very close with. Freya went on to have two more stillbirths - one in 2001 and another in 2003.
Afterwards, she was placed on birth control and kept on medication for her depression. She was later taken off birth control in hopes of being artificially inseminated, but she never became pregnant.
While Freya lived a life in captivity mostly without incident, she was involved in an incident with one trainer in 2008, in which she repeatedly attempted to submerge him underwater and pushed him around the tank. At one point in a video taken by a park guest, the trainer can be seen with his hands in Freya’s mouth, though he was able to exit the tank without any serious injuries.
On June 20, 2015, Freya died suddenly after a lengthy battle with an illness - though the illness that caused her death has not been disclosed to the public. Unfortunately, four months later on October 12, Valentin, Freya’s only living calf, also died due to Intestinal Volulus (twisted intestines).
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