It was a huge evacuation. In fact, two.
In what experts say is one of the most complex marine mammal rescues ever, a pair of beluga whales were rescued from an aquarium in the ravaged city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine on Wednesday morning and transported to Europe’s largest aquarium in Valencia, Spain.
Marine mammal experts say the evacuation of Prombiel, a 15-year-old man, and Miranda, a 14-year-old woman, comes at the right time as Russian air strikes intensify on Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv.
“If they had remained in Kharkiv, their chances of survival would have been very slim,” said Daniel Garcia-Párraga, director of animal operations at Valencia’s Oceanographic Institutions, who helped lead the rescue.
Beluga whales’ natural habitat is the Arctic and require cold water to survive. Disruption to Kharkiv’s power grid means the aquarium there must rely on generators for power, making it difficult to keep the water cool.
Meanwhile, the whales’ diet has recently been cut in half due to a shortage of the 132 pounds of squid, herring, mackerel and other fresh fish the whales need each day, Dr. Garcia-Parraga said. Caregivers in Ukraine are even considering using discarded fish from restaurants and markets.
In recent weeks, bombs have exploded close enough to ripple through the water at their home in Nemo’s Dolphinarium. As the situation became more dangerous, the Ukrainians decided the whales needed to be evacuated.
Even under the best of circumstances, moving marine mammals can be risky. Transporting sick or stressed animals can add to the difficulty.
“You want to make sure that everyone being transported is as healthy as possible,” said veterinarian Michael Walsh, who directs the University of Florida’s Marine Animal Rescue Program but was not involved in the operation.
In an emergency, he said, “you may not have as many options.”
Dan Ashe, president of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and former head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said it took “the most elite team of marine mammal experts in the world” to achieve what he called “perhaps the most complex marine mammal.” Animals” have performed rescues. “
Experts from the Maritime Museum of Valencia, the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta and SeaWorld all assisted the Ukrainians in the operation, which lasted 36 hours and covered more than 1,900 miles, starting Monday night and finishing before dawn on Wednesday.
Kharkiv seems an unlikely beluga habitat. But Lori Marino, an expert on cetacean intelligence and captive animal welfare, said there are more than 3,500 cetaceans, including whales, dolphins and porpoises, in captivity around the world. “I would not be surprised to find cetaceans in captivity anywhere,” she said in an email.
Dr Marino, who is also chairman of the Whale Sanctuary Project, said cetaceans should not be kept in captivity.
“But if they are, we have a moral obligation to keep them out of harm’s way,” she said.
NEMO dolphinariums, which operate at multiple locations in Ukraine, have faced multiple accusations of animal cruelty. Animal rights group UAnimals, which has evacuated thousands of animals since the Russian invasion, this year issued a scathing report into the dolphinarium.
Olga Chevganiuk, head of the organization’s international department, said dolphinariums “must now be banned in Ukraine”.
Natalia Gorzak, a wildlife rescue field officer with the International Fund for Animal Welfare working in Ukraine, said that while the rescue operation was welcome, the whales should not have been in Kharkiv at all, noting that there were signs that NEMO had Some animals were illegally taken there.
“They capture marine mammals and use them – train them and use them for entertainment,” she said. “This is absolutely not okay.”
The operator of the NEMO facility has denied allegations of abuse.
Kharkiv’s dolphinarium remains open, although some seals, dolphins and sea lions have been evacuated from the facility. There are dolphin shows here despite air-raid sirens going on for more than 16 hours a day.
But as bombing of the city intensified, the challenges of caring for the belugas became too great.
Dennis Kristen, senior director of animal welfare and behavior at the Georgia Aquarium, who saw the whales after they entered Moldova from Ukraine, said in an interview that “the evacuation was very complex” and that rescuers had been working for weeks.
Both Mr. Christen and Dr. Garcia-Parraga said that if One of the world’s leading beluga experts has not lived in Kharkiv.
The specialist, Olga Shpak, gave up her research the day Russia invaded and moved to Kharkov to help with the war effort, working with Aid Ukraine, a company that aids frontline soldiers and civilians charity).
Ms. Shpak, who received the call while driving through eastern Ukraine, said she was aware of the plight of Kharkiv’s whales when the war broke out, but that evacuation was not feasible as Russian forces pressured the city.
Concerns about the animals faded away as the situation stabilized in the fall of 2022, when the Russians were driven out of the area.
As conditions worsened in recent months and evacuation plans were formed, Dr. Garcia-Parraga contacted Ms. Shpak. The two first met at a Beluga conference in Valencia in 2007 but lost contact after the invasion. After reconnecting, Ms. Shpak became the main liaison between Ukrainians and international experts.
Mr. Christine said they would ask her a thousand questions day and night, and she would answer them all.
The problem started with Ukrainian shipping boxes. They were not designed for beluga whales and were too small. The Ukrainians decided that every time they lifted the crate containing the whale, they would drain the water rather than risk breaking it.
“The Ukrainian team did a great job moving the animals from Kharkiv to Odessa,” Dr. Garcia-Parraga said.
A member of the Oceanogràfic team met the truck carrying the crates in Odessa, where it carried out a rigorous inspection.
Once a truck crosses the border into Moldova, there is no turning back. So if there is any problem with the crate or the whale’s health, they need to find it in Odessa. The team approved and the whale was back on the road.
In Moldova, Dr. García-Paraga and Mr. Christian hopped in a truck and headed to the airport. Because Moldovan airports lacked the heavy cranes needed to move the whale, rescuers chartered a special cargo plane equipped with an in-house crane.
The complexity of the paperwork and the simultaneous transit of the Italian Prime Minister through the airport added valuable time to the trip. Over time, the team needs to constantly monitor the whales and keep the water in the tank between 22 and 24 degrees Celsius.
They finally arrived in Valencia before dawn and arrived at their new home at 6:30 am.
“We care deeply about animals,” Dr. Garcia-Parraga said. But he was still moved by the concern shown by Ukrainians who helped evacuate.
Even as they were dealing with the trauma of losing friends and loved ones, they still showed a deep compassion for animals, he said.
