Two of the four Shedd Aquarium beluga whales that have died in recent weeks suffered from a “chronic gastrointestinal disease” — a sickness that likely developed before they arrived here from a Canadian aquatic park, Shedd staff announced Friday.
A third beluga, 34-year-old Beethoven, suffered from age-related health problems, Shedd said. Beethoven, unlike the other two, was part of the aquarium’s resident population.
Shedd also said veterinarians have found no evidence of a “shared infectious disease or common environmental factor connecting” the deaths of Beethoven, Peekachu and Rain.
“These initial findings do not always lead to one definitive cause of death. However, the evidence can still provide meaningful insight into an animal’s health, identify conditions that may have contributed to a loss and inform the care of other animals,” Shedd said in a statement. “We want to share what the evidence can and cannot establish, and how we are applying what we learn to the care of the belugas at Shedd.”
Shedd took in a total of 10 belugas from Marineland, adding to the eight resident whales.
“No animal is where we want them to be clinically, but we are fortified by the incremental, step-by-step progress, which is often not linear,” the aquarium said in its statement. “Secord and Caspian remain the whales of greatest clinical concern at this time, and our teams continue to monitor them and the other rescued belugas around the clock.”
Peekachu, a 23-year-old female, died Aug. 25, and Rain, a 20-year-old female, died Sept. 2. A total of four belugas, including three at Shedd, have died since being transported out of the shuttered Marineland Canada during the summer. One of those, Osiris, a 26-year-old female, died Monday at Shedd. Jelly Bean, another rescued beluga, died at Oceanografic Valencia in Spain earlier this month.
Animal rights activists in the United States and Canada have questioned whether the belugas were healthy enough to endure the stress of being transferred out of Marineland — in trucks and then airplanes. Shedd’s preliminary medical findings will likely only raise further questions about the rescue and the health of the belugas before they left Canada.
“The Shedd necropsy findings of the dead belugas confirm what everybody should have known — that these whales were suffering from poor health after years of neglect at Marineland,” said Camille Labchuk, executive director of Animal Justice, a Toronto, Canada-based animal rights advocacy group. “…These sick belugas deserved far better than a rushed transfer to clear the way for Marineland’s lucrative land deal to go through. Instead, there should have been efforts to improve the belugas’ health enough so they could withstand the stress of transport and a new, unfamiliar environment.”
Shedd is part of a consortium of four U.S. and one Spanish aquarium that together agreed to take 30 belugas languishing in Marineland in Niagara Falls, Canada. Marineland had faced criticism for years 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.
