Six beluga deaths cast a shadow over rescue from Canada’s Marineland

Six members of a pod of 30 belugas, a fifth of the whales that were transferred from a marine park in Canada to facilities in the U.S. and Spain as part of a massive rescue operation, have died in the last two months. They were transported to the facilities in July and August after languishing for more than a year at the Marineland theme park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, which closed to the public in 2025. These cetaceans were among the last to be held captive in Canada, after the country passed the Ending the Captivity of Whales and Dolphins Act in 2019. The law banned the keeping, breeding, and trading of cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and porpoises) for entertainment, affecting Marineland’s business model. After months of uncertainty over the animals’ future — including threats of euthanasia and an attempt to send them to an entertainment park in China — a consortium of aquariums under the U.S. Association of Zoos & Aquariums (AZA) devised the plan to transfer the 30 Marineland belugas. Sixteen went to SeaWorld facilities in California and Texas, 10 to Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, two to Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, and two to Oceanogràfic València in Spain, which also took in four bottlenose dolphins. A captive beluga at SeaWorld San Diego. Image by Steven Snodgrass via Flickr (CC BY 2.0). On Aug. 26, Shedd Aquarium announced that Peekachu, a 23-year-old female beluga (Delphinapterus leucas) who had arrived at the facility on Aug. 13 and was blind in one…This article was originally published on Mongabay