In special steel containers marked “live animals, this side up,” the mammoth sea creatures arrived in Chicago in the pre-dawn hours Tuesday.
It was the first phase of a beluga whale rescue mission Shedd Aquarium staff call “urgent” and “unprecedented.”
Lori Marino, an animal rights advocate, says it never should have come to this.
She and others like her envisioned the belugas making their home in a cordoned-off cove along Nova Scotia’s northeastern shore.
“It’s the best possible solution. Even though it’s still captivity, we are giving them back as much as we possibly can — what was taken from them in the entertainment industry,” said Marino, co-founder and president of the planned $15 million Whale Sanctuary Project in Port Hilford Bay, Nova Scotia.
Instead, four of the 30 belugas at the shuttered Marineland aquatic park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, were settling in at Shedd Tuesday. Named Acadia, Lillooet, Osiris and Sierra, the Chicago belugas are all females. Shedd officials said they were chosen to move together “because of their preexisting bonds with one another.” The youngest is 21 years old, while the oldest of the four is 27.
“While the whales have arrived safely, a transport effort of this magnitude is difficult, and the aquarium cautions that experts expect to learn more about the rescued belugas’ health and current condition in the coming days,” Shedd announced in a news release.
Some Canadian animal rights advocates have been sounding the alarm for years about animal welfare concerns at Marineland, including cramped tanks and poor water quality. They argue the whales shouldn’t be going from one “concrete tank” to another, and exporting them to Shedd and other aquariums outside the country may even violate Canadian law.
“The real concern that I and others have is ensuring that Shedd and the other aquariums aren’t going to breed the belugas,” said Camille Labchuk, executive director of Animal Justice, a Toronto-based animal law advocacy group. “If they breed them, that will completely undermine Canada’s national laws, which intended for this generation of whales to be the last suffering in captivity.”
Johnny Ford, a Shedd spokesman, said “right now, the entire focus of our animal care team is on facilitating a safe rescue.”
But he didn’t rule out the Marineland belugas being bred at some point.
“In the future, if belugas from Marineland were to breed at the aquarium, it would be no different than the way that any other species that is managed by Shedd would breed and that is guided by scientific research, by [Association of Zoos and Aquariums] accreditation standards. … It’s data-informed and it’s always done responsibly.”
A Canadian theme park shutters
For generations, families flocked to Marineland just south of Niagara Falls, drawn to the sprawling park for its zoo, rides and shows featuring leaping orcas, twirling dolphins and trainers kissing belugas.
“Everyone loves Marineland,” went the park’s catchy jingle.
Not everyone. The park has drawn protesters for years, accusing Marineland of poor treatment of animals. A total of more than 20 whales and dolphins have died at the park since 2019, according to media reports. Changing cultural attitudes about keeping animals in captivity also contributed to dwindling attendance.
Labchuk last stepped inside Marineland in 2021.
“They had dolphins spinning in the air to the [Lou Bega] song, ‘Mambo No. 5.’ That tells you all you need to know,” she said.
The park closed permanently to the public in 2024. Numerous online drone videos show the belugas languishing in grubby tanks.
The question then was how best to care for the remaining animals?
Marino, a neuroscientist and New York University professor, is among a group of animal welfare advocates who, about 11 years ago, began searching for a coastal sanctuary to take up to a dozen captive whales. It would be the first whale sanctuary in North America.
The group settled on a wooded cove in northeastern Nova Scotia, leasing from the Canadian government an area of coastal water the equivalent of about 100 acres. A wall of netting would prevent the whales from venturing into the open ocean.
“Having lived in tanks — most of them have been born in tanks — they’re missing all the skills they would need to feed themselves, to form a social group [in open water],” Marino said. “It would be disastrous.”
Here, harbor seals glide through its slate-blue waters and rock crab scuttle across its sandy bottom. On the shore, black bear and white-tailed deer roam through stands of white spruce and balsam fir.
The group broke ground on the sanctuary several weeks ago and has raised from private donations and foundations about half of the $15 million they say they need to open.
Labchuk, a whale sanctuary supporter, said the project would be further along with help from the Canadian federal government.
“We’ve been telling them for close to a decade that they should be supporting this and that hasn’t materialized,” Labchuk said.
Meanwhile, Marineland applied for permits in September 2025 to have the whales shipped to a theme park in China. Joanne Thompson, Canada’s minister of Fisheries, denied the permits, saying the transfer was not in the best interests of the whales.
Marineland promptly wrote back to Thompson and, citing Marineland’s “critical financial state,” said: “Our only options at this point are to relocate the whales or face the devastating decision of euthanasia.”
The Sun-Times tried to reach representatives from Marineland for comment but had not heard back as of late Tuesday afternoon.
Earlier this year, Marineland and Canada’s Accredited Zoos and Aquariums asked Shedd, among others, to investigate rescuing the belugas, Shedd has said.
And on Monday, four of the 30 whales were hoisted out of the water in special slings and loaded into containers before being flown out of Canada to Chicago, according to Canadian media reports.
Four belugas, all female, arrived Tuesday morning.
“Currently, the animal care teams at Shedd are working around-the-clock, looking after the rescued whales, providing immediate care and acclimating the animals. For now, caretakers are moving at each individual whale’s pace, and the rescued belugas are not viewable by the public,” Shedd said Tuesday.
The newcomers join Shedd’s existing group of eight belugas, which can grow up to 18 feet long and weigh about 3,000 pounds. In the wild, they can live for up to 90 years.
Possible violation of Canadian law
But Marino, Labchuk and other animal welfare advocates say none of the belugas should be shipped out without first having, at the very least, assurances from the receiving aquariums that they won’t breed the animals.
A 2019 Canadian law, among other things, bans breeding whales in captivity on Canadian soil. The government’s own policy says an application for export permits must show a commitment from the receiving facility that it “will not breed or impregnate the cetacean being exported from Canada.”
“The government’s own policies say they should not be exported if they are going to be bred, yet the government seems to have [stepped back] from that position,” Labchuk said. “They are not confirming to us that they are putting that condition on the permits.”
In January, Thompson, the Canadian fishery minister, met with Canadian reporters and was asked about approving the export permits without including a provision that they not be used for breeding in captivity.
“My confidence in this is that it includes all of the [Marineland] belugas and the dolphins,” Thompson said. “The sites are accredited — the highest standards for animal welfare in the world.”
Labchuk said her organization hasn’t ruled out legal action. The Canadian law states marine mammals should be exported only when it’s in their “best interests.”
“It’s a pretty novel test under the law, and that goes for really anywhere around the planet,” Labchuk said. “Usually when we look at animals, what’s important under the law is the interests of the people who own them.”
Marino, meanwhile, acknowledges the U.S. receiving aquariums, which also include Georgia Aquarium, SeaWorld San Antonio and SeaWorld San Diego, offer a better life than Marineworld.
“But this is not what they deserve,” she said. “They deserve a very different life in a sanctuary where they can actually have the ability to thrive.”