A Cross-Country Clamor to Free Lolita : Wildlife: Washington governor seeks release of killer whale from Florida park.

MIAMI —  One of the entertainment world’s biggest stars did two sellout shows here Friday, completely oblivious to a whale of a cross-continent controversy involving her employer, allegations of sex harassment by the governor of Washington, as well as a complex question of animal rights.

The star: Lolita, a six-ton killer whale who for 25 years has both awed and soaked visitors to Miami’s Seaquarium with her splashy leaps.

The governor: Washington’s Mike Lowry, who after an emotional visit to the movie set of a “Free Willy” sequel has demanded that Lolita be returned to her mother in Puget Sound.

The question: Can a whale who for most of her life has been kept in a tank, hand-fed 160 pounds of fish a day and given a daily tongue massage survive in the wild?

The campaign to return Lolita to the West Coast was begun by the Center for Whale Research in Washington’s San Juan Islands, which has offered to raise $2 million to buy the whale. “This is a mercy mission,” said Miami publisher Jerry Powers, who has fueled the Free Lolita campaign in the pages of his upscale fashion magazine, Ocean Drive. “In captivity, she might live a year or two. In the wild, she could live to be 80.”

Lolita is one of more than 50 orcas captured in Puget Sound in the late 1960s and early 1970s and sold to aquariums and theme parks. Washington state outlawed such captures in the mid-1970s, and since then all those taken from Puget Sound--except Lolita--have died.

Lowry, a first-term Democrat, called a press conference Thursday on a bluff overlooking Puget Sound and vowed that he would work to bring Lolita home so she could “retire as a citizen of Washington state.”

Seaquarium spokeswoman Karen Janson said that she is suspicious of the governor’s motives. “His political position right now is not the greatest,” Janson said Friday. “He may be looking for a heartwarming story.”

Lowry’s former deputy press secretary has accused the governor of sexual harassment, and a Seattle attorney has been named to investigate the charges. Lowry and his staff also underwent sensitivity training in September after a state employee said that the governor rubbed against her in a sexual way as she was fingerprinting him for an ID card.

Seaquarium officials insisted that Lolita is not for sale and is not a fit candidate for release into the wild anyway.

“We release animals all the time--pilot whales, manatees, sea turtles--but they have to meet behavioral, medical and ethical criteria formulated by the federal government,” said Greg Bossart, a Seaquarium veterinarian.

There is very little data on the survival of animals released into the wild after years of captivity, according to scientists. But Ken Balcomb, director of the Center for Whale Research, said that Lolita is a good candidate.

He said that she would be held in a cove within Puget Sound where she would be taught to catch fish and communicate with other whales. Ultimately, Balcomb said, Lolita would make the decision on whether to take her chances in the open ocean.

Times researchers Anna M. Virtue in Miami and Doug Conner in Seattle contributed to this story.