Niagara Falls, Canada – Nestled close to the mesmerizing cascade of Niagara Falls, Marineland of Canada operates as a unique blend of an amusement park, zoo, aquarium, and forest sprawled across nearly 1,000 acres. Over decades, the park has been a magnet for visitors eager to catch a glimpse of its more than 4,000 animals, including walruses, orcas, dolphins, and belugas. However, recent years have seen a troubling trend with a marked increase in beluga whale deaths, stirring public distress and calls for action from political figures.
The park, which houses the largest captive beluga population in the world, reported five beluga deaths last year, escalating the total carnivore fatalities to over 20 since 2019. This surge in mortalities sparked significant concern among provincial politicians, with New Democrat leader Marit Stiles branding the deaths “disgraceful” and suggesting the potential closure of the park if elected.
Phil Demers, a former senior trainer at Marineland with 12 years of experience, criticized the park’s practices, stating, “People are waking up to the fact that putting a whale in a glass jar is just about as cruel as it gets.” He, among others, advocates for a rethink on whale captivity, reflecting a broader shift in public attitude toward marine wildlife parks. This shifting perspective is echoed internationally; for instance, Marineland in France recently shut its doors following a significant drop in visitors over the last decade.
Activists are leveraging these incidents to intensify their long-standing campaign against marine mammal captivity. Following the death of Kiska, Canada’s last captive orca, at Marineland in 2023, activists have honed in on the plight of the remaining 31 belugas at the facility. With the future of the park in question, Demers raised concerns regarding potential relocations for these marine animals, lamenting the absence of realistic sanctuary options for them.
Journalistic investigations into the beluga deaths have encountered numerous challenges, attributed in part to the opacity of the Animal Welfare Services (AWS), Ontario’s oversight body. Liam Casey from the Canadian Press noted the difficulty in obtaining clear reasons behind the whale deaths due to AWS’s restrictive information policies. In response to these assessments, AWS initiated an inquiry into Marineland in 2020 and identified inadequate water quality as a distress factor, leading to an order which the park initially contested but later complied with by improving water conditions.
Further complicating the park’s operations, Melanie Milczynski, head of AWS, suggested in a recent interview that the mammal deaths do not appear linked to water quality issues. This statement came alongside her acknowledgment of the need for AWS to communicate more proactively about its operations, after inspectors visited the park over 200 times since 2020.
Marineland has robustly defended its care standards, claiming that their whales receive exemplary healthcare and are looked after by specialists. They argue that the narrative of abuse leveraged by animal rights groups is merely propaganda. Despite this defense, the park’s future remains uncertain under the shadow of federal and provincial laws passed in 2015 and 2019, respectively, which ban the sale, breeding, and further captivity of whales.
As regulations tighten and public opinion shifts, the practical realities for Marineland’s belugas show limited improvement. Camille Labchuk, a director at Animal Justice Canada, expressed that laws alone have not transformed the conditions for captive whales as envisioned.
As Marineland wrestles with these challenges and searches for new ownership, it remains to be seen how it will adapt its operations and whether it can align with the evolving public conscience on animal welfare and captivity.