Shedd Aquarium to receive four more beluga whales from Marineland

First publishedAug 12, 22:05 UTC

Last updatedAug 12, 22:32 UTC · 6m ago

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Chicago Sun-Times6Shedd Aquarium to receive four more beluga whales from MarinelandAug 12, 22:05 UTCOpen ↗

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<p>Shedd Aquarium’s beluga whale population is about to double — from what it was a month ago.</p><p>Four more of the white cetaceans are expected to leave the shuttered Marineland Canada this week, arriving in Chicago early Thursday if all goes to plan.</p><p>That’s a big “if,” given the storms that continue to sweep through the region.</p><p>On Wednesday morning, Shedd staff were in Niagara Falls, Canada, preparing the steel boxes used to transport the belugas — first by truck, then inside a Boeing 777 cargo plane flying from Toronto to Chicago, with one stop along the way: The same flight will also carry two more Marineland belugas headed to Georgia Aquarium.</p><p>“We are making sure we have everything that we need… from duct tape to making sure we have the appropriate foam and all the appropriate [beluga] stretcher sizes. This operation is so complex and every animal is different, and we tailor all of the transport equipment per animal,” said Charlie Jacobsma, Shedd’s director of animal behavior and training.</p><p>The incoming whales — all female and named Caspian, Peekachu, Rain and Secord — will join four other beluga rescues that arrived from Marineland July 21. In total, Shedd is expected to house 16 belugas, including the eight already living at the aquarium before the Marineland whales arrived.</p><p>The Marineland belugas, a group of 30, had been living at the park, which has for years faced criticism that its animals were living in unsanitary conditions. The park closed to the public in 2024 and Marineland officials, citing extreme financial difficulties, had threatened to euthanize the whales if permanent homes couldn’t be found.</p><p>None of the Marineland belugas has yet been put on display to the public at Shedd, and there is no timeline for when that might happen.</p><p>“If you have a rescue dog that is still learning to be confident in their new surroundings, you’re not going to take the dog to a dog park the first day that you have him and introduce him to all these new stimuli,” Jacobsma said.</p><p>The plan is to run some tests on the four incoming whales, and if the animals are found to be healthy, then they’ll be grouped with the four other rescued belugas.</p><p>Shedd uses a series of gates to separate the mammal groups.</p><p>“In some rare instances, some of the belugas at Shedd have shared the same space [with the Marineland whales], but mostly it has been through the gates,” said Shedd spokesman Johnny Ford.</p><p>The current goal is for Shedd to take a total of 10 belugas from Marineland, although an exact timeline for when the remaining two might travel to Chicago has not been determined, Shedd staff said.</p><p>Asked about the cost of the operation to remove all 30 whales — others are traveling to aquariums in Georgia, Texas, California and Spain — Ford said it is “projected to go into the millions,” primarily covered by the receiving aquariums.</p><p>Ford said the cost would not be passed along to Shedd visitors in the form of increased ticket prices.</p><p>“This is not what we had in our budgets this year, but it was something that we felt called to do as an obligation to these animals.

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