Cetacean biologist calls ocean sanctuaries for Marineland's belugas an untested hypothesis

Five belugas died at the two receiving facilities after the move, but one of them was a resident of the US facility ^[3]. The Marineland deaths come to four: three in the US and one in Spain ^[4][20]. Against the park's 30 belugas, that is about 13% ^[21]. The piece does not say how many whales went to each facility, when they died or what killed them. Without those figures, and without a normal death rate for belugas at the receiving sites, nobody can separate the losses caused by the move from the ones that would have happened anyway.

In my view, the four deaths show that moving these animals carried risk. They cannot show whether a sea pen would have carried less. The author of the piece, published by phys.org, is a cetacean biologist with more than 20 years of work with wild animals and with animals in professional care ^[17]. "Whether a zoo-born cetacean benefits from a sanctuary is a hypothesis to test, not a fact to assume," the author wrote ^[12].

The argument against assuming it turns on what changes for an animal raised in a pool. A move to the ocean alters water chemistry, ocean sound, currents and weather. Porous netting can also let in pathogens, parasites and unfamiliar species ^[10]. On the author's account, welfare depends partly on how predictable an environment is. An animal needs enough change to stay engaged but not so much that it is overwhelmed and suffers harmful stress ^[19]. In a sanctuary the whales would still live behind nets and depend on people for food and veterinary care, and managers would still decide their social groups ^[9].

The record of past attempts is small and anecdotal. The National Aquarium in Baltimore pledged about 10 years ago to move its animals to a sanctuary and has not yet done so ^[14]. Ric O'Barry's Dolphin Project sanctuary in Bali took four animals from the Melka Excelsior Hotel in Lovina. One died soon after arriving, and another died after a release attempt ^[15], so two of the four died ^[22]. In the 1990s O'Barry tried to release two former Navy dolphins, Buck and Luther, from his Sugarloaf Sanctuary in Florida. Both had to be rescued, one in critical condition ^[16]. Two of these cases involved release, and a sanctuary is not release ^[8]. They say more about returning animals to the wild than about long-term care in a sea pen.

The author does see a place for the model. In specific circumstances, the piece says, a sanctuary could house animals that are vulnerable in the wild while preserving some of their autonomy ^[18].