Saturday 02 November 2019 | 2

The last belugas in a whale prison

The last belugas in a whale prison

Mis à jour le 05 May 2020

The last 50 belugas in a whale prison will soon leave their floating enclosures in Srednyaya Bay, even if their "owners" have tried to sell them to Chinese parks at the end. Embarking on two ships, they should be released in the Sea of ​​Japan, in the middle of nowhere.

Hr blog

They will escape the jaws of the new winter ice as well as a slow death at the bottom of some Chinese pool in a dolphinarium, but their fate causes the most serious concerns.
If the release of the 10 captive orcas was taken more seriously, we would know more about the white whales, but we don’t. They have since last June already been put back into the sea. More or less they were released at the place of their capture, in Sakhalin Bay.

Nothing better than this for the final contingent of 50 belugas.

Packed into dirty water within tiny containers in groups of five or six individuals, they will be abandoned nearly a thousand kilometres from their homeland.
It is indeed in the bay of Uspeniya that the two vessels of the agency VNIRO will throw them overboard like bulky packets, without satellite beacon or any to track them, and without the presence of an independent observer, refused by VNIRO.
What will become of these juvenile belugas, many of which were taken from their mothers when they were barely weaned and who are therefore deprived of the experience necessary to survive in the wild? They will be able to feed themselves, of course, because fish are abundant in the Sea of Japan. But this region is also infested with North Korean poachers who deploy their driftnets there, despite the frequent raids by Russian border guards. A fate worse than death awaits any beluga whales trapped in these nets!

No chance for these ex-detainees to ever find their way back to the Okhotsk Sea, where they come from. And very little chance of encountering free belugas, because they only cross the bay of Uspeniya in winter, during their migration to the north.

Why did they condemn them to such cruel conditions of transport, to such a botched release?

The agency VNIRO says it’s because of the autumn storms that blocked the road to Sakhalin. But also because belugas do not have the same prestige or the same market value as orcas. Russia has been selling them at low prices to China for decades, where marine parks have sprung up like poisonous mushrooms.
For decades, they have been transported from one corner of Russia to the other in the bottom of old dilapidated trucks, to amuse the spectators of a traveling dolphinarium.
They will never know that these funny white clowns when they spit water or are ridden by a hilarious trainer, actually live in peaceful and complex societies, endowed with a vocal repertoire of incredible richness, traditions passed down from generation to generation and made up of loving families united for life.
Less than 4,000 wild belugas remain in the icy waters of the Russian Far East. And already 210 are languishing in Chinese jails alone and no one knows how many more in Japan, Turkey or even Russia.

So yes, this final evacuation carried out without a witness is a scandal!

Because if Vladimir Putin’s orders were indeed carried out, as with regret and dragging of the feet, it will undoubtedly be at the price of many victims whose corpses will sink off and will never be found. 
Now the whale prison pens have to remain empty forever.
Russia must finally give up catching orcas and belugas, it is the last country in the world to still practice this, and strict and clear laws must compel it! By supporting international experts and courageous local associations active in the field, One Voice will do everything in its power to try to convince them.

VNIRO (Russian Federal Institute for Research on Fisheries and Oceanography): research organization created more than 135 years ago to scientifically support Russia's activity in the field of fisheries management, the coordination of the implementing fisheries research plans and programs.

Yvon Godefroid
Hr blog

In the subject

The court prohibit Marineland from relocating the orcas before the end of the independent assessment Moana has just died in the chlorinated Marineland prison, the only place he has seen in his twelve years of life. One Voice is going to court again

Comments 2

I accept that publication of my comments is subject to the code of conduct.

Titange | Monday 09 December 2019

La seule espèce qui ne mérite pas la valeur qu'on lui prête est l'humain, ni plus ni moins!

trochu | Saturday 02 November 2019

Ça fait mal de voir autant d'indifférence et d'insensibilité envers ces animaux qui, comme vous le dites, vont être livrés à eux-mêmes... Je suis bouleversée par tant de mépris des humains à l'encontre des animaux quels qu'ils soient, ils n'ont pas encore compris que la fin des animaux entraînera aussi celle des humains ? Je suis convaincue que c'est à tous les gouvernements dont le nôtre de montrer l'exemple en agissant concrètement et complètement en faveur des animaux dans tous les domaines et en cessant de cautionner et tolérer voire encourager la maltraitance, la torture, la barbarie et l'exploitation des animaux qui ont droit de vivre en toute liberté et en paix sur cette terre.