Marineland says it has euthanized a seven-year-old beluga whale after a long battle with several different medical conditions.
It is the 18th beluga to die at the Niagara Falls, Ont., tourist attraction since 2019. Three other belugas sold to a Connecticut aquarium in 2021 have since died. Kiska, the country’s last remaining killer whale in captivity, died in April 2023. One dolphin, one harbour seal, one grey seal, two sea lions and two Magellanic penguins have also died at the park in the past five years.
The province says its Animal Welfare Services team received confirmation of the death on Thursday.
Marineland says in a post on social media that Eos was born in 2017 to a first-time mother and needed help from the pod to raise her.
The park says Eos was diagnosed with renal disease in 2021 and suffered from infection that required intensive treatment.
Marineland says Eos rebounded several times, but her conditioned worsened in the past few months to the point that a team of veterinarians decided euthanasia was the proper course.
The province’s chief animal welfare inspector told The Canadian Press in November that to her understanding, marine mammal deaths at the tourist destination have not been related to water quality.
That’s despite the fact the water did not meet the standard of care until recently, Melanie Milczynski said in a rare interview. The province’s “proactive team” of inspectors, which is a specialized unit of 10 inspectors that examine zoos and aquariums, test Marineland’s water weekly, Milczynski said.
As of November, she said they have visited the park 205 times since the province took over animal welfare enforcement from the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in 2020.
In 2020, Animal Welfare Services launched an investigation into the park. The following year, it declared that all marine mammals in the park were in distress due to poor water quality and ordered Marineland to fix the issue. Marineland appealed the order while denying its animals were in distress, but later dropped that appeal.
On Thursday evening Phil Demers, a former trainer at the park and an animal rights activist, said on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, “Yet another beluga whale has been euthanized at MarineLand. This time it was Eos, a young (7 year old) female. 31 beluga whales remain.”
Marineland filed a lawsuit in 2013 against Demers, alleging that he trespassed and plotted to steal an 800-pound walrus named Smooshi. Demers filed a counterclaim, also in 2013, for defamation and abuse of process. Marineland dropped that $1.5-million lawsuit in 2022.
