Canada’s Beluga Whale Captivity Crisis Escalates

Marineland, an aquatic park near Niagara Falls, faces financial bankruptcy and threatens to euthanize 30 beluga whales. The park stated that monthly maintenance costs of 2 million Canadian dollars have become unsustainable. Without government funding or approval for relocation, it will be forced to carry out euthanasia. This incident exposes the lack of a contingency plan for captive cetaceans—globally, only a handful of sanctuaries in Iceland and Turkey have the capacity to accept them, yet their scale is far from sufficient to accommodate such a large population.