The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Demand change in the face of senseless whale deaths
A recently released U.S. government report details the senseless death of a vibrant 5-year-old who died in captivity due to the alleged neglect and inaction of supposed “world-class” caregivers. Yet most Americans will never hear about this report. That’s because in this case, the victim was not a U.S. citizen. It was an imported beluga whale.
Last year, the National Marine Fisheries Service granted a permit to the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut to import five beluga whales purchased from Marineland Canada. The permit came after years of lobbying, consultation and with much controversy. The imported whales had special status under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act because each whale had at least one parent that was from a group of whales at risk in the wild, and the import went through heightened scrutiny.
Supporters of the Mystic Aquarium argued the whales would be better off, and that the whales would receive the world-class care Mystic boasts on its website. Yet, less than a year later, two of the five whales are dead and at least one other has been gravely ill. The details are shameful.
Havok was the first of two beluga whales to die at Mystic Aquarium, after surviving the grueling 14-hour transfer in May 2021 that included cranes, trucks and an airplane. Havok perished less than three months after the transfer. Less than three weeks later, one of the belugas, Jetta, was extremely ill and failing. Now, Havana is the second beluga to lose her life.
The U.S. government was warned that this transfer was a bad idea and might prove fatal for the whales. Experts and scientists, including an official with the organization that previously oversaw the enforcement of animal protection laws at Marineland, highlighted the potential risks with relocating Havok, Havana, Jetta, Kharabali, and Sahara (the Beluga 5). Whales are not meant to be transported by planes, cranes and trucks. They are meant to swim free in the ocean. Yet the U.S. government chose to ignore this expert advice and approved the import permit anyway.
The United States Department of Agriculture recently released a harrowing report about the final hours of Havok’s life and the conditions at Mystic. It should be a wakeup call for U.S. citizens and policymakers.
Havok was seen rolling, bleeding and even gasping for air over his last eight hours. Yet according to the USDA report, Mystic’s self-proclaimed “world class animal care team” didn’t even bother to call the attending veterinarian.
He later died. In its findings, USDA concluded that Mystic “failed to provide adequate veterinary care by not using appropriate methods to prevent, control, diagnose and treat diseases during Havok’ s last eight hours.” Instead, it appears, Mystic staff stood by, watching, and taking notes about how he was dying.
The report addressed another incident where the Mystic staff startled Havok with a net, causing him to ram into a gate, injuring his rostrum (beak) and mandible (lower jaw). Havok had vision problems and was injured multiple other times at Mystic from collisions around the pool, according to the government report.
Mystic’s facilities are also lacking. The USDA report showed that Mystic’s pool does not meet required standards for shade. At least one whale suffers from solar dermatitis and skin ulcerations from the sun. All of the whales from Marineland have issues with their eyes that can be aggravated by direct sunlight. Instead of building shade for the whales, Mystic had been applying sunscreen to them, which is likely a stressful process.
Life at Mystic certainly hasn’t been a fairy tale ending for these whales as some hoped. In the wild, beluga whales can dive to depths more than 3,000 feet and are known to swim up to 3,000 miles each year. But the Beluga 5 have lived — or lived — their whole lives in captivity, confined to a concrete tank.
Havok and Havana never got to feel the ocean on their fins.
Why were these belugas doomed to this existence? Because some people are willing to pay for the entertainment. Mystic asserted that the Beluga 5 were transferred for what it claimed was important research, but according to the NMFS’s website, Mystic hasn’t conducted any research on these animals since August.
Instead, the belugas have been exploited to raise money, like the $3.4 million that Mystic secured last August, at a single fundraising event, where among other things, they auctioned off the right to rename the beluga whales from Marineland to the highest bidder.
USDA’s report is critical, and it is encouraging that the NMFS is investigating these unfortunate deaths. But more must be done to protect beluga whales and other marine mammals under the law. Congress should amend the Marine Mammal Protection Act to permanently prevent the profit-fueled transfer of these majestic creatures.
And perhaps the time has come to ban beluga captivity in the U.S. all together. If Mystic is the “world-class,” Americans must demand better than “world-class.” Watching more belugas die is simply unacceptable.