It’s the end of an era in Canada, as the last captive whales have been relocated from the Marineland theme park in Niagara Falls, Ont.
Staff at the closed tourist attraction have completed the largest collective move of captive whales ever seen in the world.
Thirty Belugas and four dolphins have been shipped to new homes at five aquariums, four in the United States and one in Spain.
The last whales, six Belugas, were moved this week.
It was an emotional goodbye for many of the staff members at Marineland who looked after the whales for years.
"I will remember all my years with these animals for the rest of my life," Taylor Lee Dell, one of the whale trainers, said. "I’m glad that they get to travel and explore and have new beginnings with new people that will love them like we love them."
Dell was there when the last Beluga, Tofino, who weighed more than 1,500 kilograms (3,300 pounds) was taken out of the water. Tofino, Tank, Odin and Orion will make SeaWorld San Antonio their new home, while the other two, Yukon and Gimli, are bound for the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago.
The relocation program began a couple of months ago. Now that it’s been closed for nearly two years, Marineland said it could no longer care for the whales.
"We are out of money, out of time," Marineland adviser Andrew Burns said. "No where for them to go. No realistic options. This is the end for them. They’d have to be euthanized. So this saved their lives."
Last year, the Niagara Falls, Ont., tourist attraction wanted to move the whales to an aquarium in China, but that was blocked by the federal government in Ottawa. In 2019, Canada banned whale and dolphin captivity but allowed those at Marineland to stay there.
"Of course our gold standard would have been a seaside sanctuary where these animals could live the remainder of their lives in a more naturalistic setting," said Erin Ryan, the wildlife campaign manager for World Animal Protection Canada. "But I don’t have any doubt that these particular aquariums are upholding a higher professional standard than what they’re currently seeing at Marineland."
Ryan said she doesn’t know if the new aquarium homes for the animals will uphold the standards set by the Canadian government — to not use them for entertainment or breed them in captivity.
But the largest transfer of whales in captivity was carried out professionally, according to Andrew Trites of the University of British Columbia’s Mammal Research Unit.
"They’ve removed a remarkable number of animals and done it extremely well," he said. "I don’t think it anybody could’ve asked for it to have gone better."
One whale died last month, two weeks after arriving at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. Staff there said the whale suffered from dehydration.
Meanwhile Marineland has been up for sale for more than two years. At one point it was the most popular amusement park in Canada.
