Russia to release orcas in new but less ideal habitat
MOSCOW: Russia is to free captured killer whales over the next month, but will not return them to their original habitat despite expert advice, a scientist said.
The animals will instead be released from their pens in Russia’s Far East and may “disrupt vacationers” at resorts nearby, said Vladislav Rozhnov, who was involved in talks over their fate.
Nearly 100 belugas and orcas were captured last summer and kept in small pens by commercial firms who planned to deliver them to aquariums, including in China where the industry is booming.
Ten killer whales, or orcas, will be released “in late May to early June”, Rozhnov said during a briefing at the Russian environment ministry.
He said it would be more ideal to transport them to where they had initially been captured, as Russian and foreign scientists have advised, but this was deemed too costly.
Instead they will be freed in the bay where they have been held near the town of Nakhodka – more than 1,300km south from where they were actually caught in the Sea of Okhotsk.
There is a risk that the whales will “stay near the pens where they were fed” and bother humans, he said.
“Science gives recommendations, but the decision is taken by government authorities,” said Rozhnov, who heads the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Environment and – with other agencies – is part of a council on the fate of the whales.
“We hope that the released animals will go north and return to their native waters,” he said.
The environment ministry said in a statement that transporting the animals to the Sea of Okhotsk could injure the animals and cause stress.
Constructing rehabilitation enclosures at a faraway release site would be too complicated, it added.
“Due to constraints of time, the realisation of this is difficult,” the ministry said.