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Three beluga whales just died at one of America’s top-rated aquariums

Why even the best aquariums can’t give animals what they need.

Two years ago, Marineland of Canada — a theme park in Niagara Falls that trained beluga whales, dolphins, and other animals to perform acrobatic tricks for entertainment — closed its doors. The decision came after years of financial turmoil, along with journalistic investigations, whistleblower accounts, and government inspections that revealed animal neglect and suffering at the park. Since 2019, 19 beluga whales and one killer whale have died at Marineland.

The closure was a win for animal welfare, but where would its animals go? Marineland’s surviving menagerie included, among other species, four dolphins and 30 beluga whales.

Given that beluga whales and dolphins are highly social animals that live in pods and swim long distances in the wild, animal welfare groups didn’t want to see them transferred to other parks like Marineland, or conventional aquariums, where the exceptionally smart and active animals would continue to suffer in captivity. Instead, they called for some of the 30 belugas to be rehomed to a proposed — though not yet built — 110-acre coastal sanctuary in Nova Scotia, Canada.

That didn’t happen. Instead, this summer, the four dolphins and two of the beluga whales went to an aquarium in Spain, while the other belugas were transferred to two SeaWorld locations — theme parks that are similar to Marineland — and two famous US aquariums: Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, which received two, and Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, which received 10.

And just as Shedd’s belugas should’ve been adjusting to their new environment, things took a turn for the worse. Over the course of eight days from late August to early September, Peekachu and Rain — two belugas who arrived at Shedd Aquarium in mid-August — and another beluga whale named Beethoven, who had been at Shedd for decades, died.

The three animals’ cause of death at Shedd Aquarium remains unknown as the aquarium awaits necropsy results.

While the three deaths in quick succession have put a spotlight on Shedd, they have also renewed scrutiny of a deeper problem with aquariums: their intensive confinement of wild animals, which runs throughout their history and goes beyond any one institution or animal.

The limitations of aquarium life

Shedd Aquarium is one of the US’s oldest and most prestigious aquariums, though this isn’t its first beluga whale controversy.

Its first two belugas were taken from the wild — an estuary in Canada — in 1991. The next year, they got four more from the wild and soon after, two of them died from cardiovascular collapse........

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