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It was a whale of an evacuation. Actually, two.<\/p>\n
In what experts said was among the most complex marine mammal rescue ever undertaken, the pair of beluga whales were extricated from an aquarium in the battered city of Kharkiv in eastern Ukraine and transported to Europe\u2019s largest aquarium in Valencia, Spain, on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n
As Russian aerial bombardments of Kharkiv, Ukraine\u2019s second-largest city, have intensified, the evacuation of Plombir, a 15-year-old male, and Miranda, a 14-year-old female, came just in time, marine mammal experts said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf they had continued in Kharkiv, their chances of survival would have been very slim,\u201d said Daniel Garcia-P\u00e1rraga, director of zoological operations at Oceanogr\u00e0fic de Valencia, who helped lead the rescue.<\/p>\n
Belugas, whose natural habitat is the Arctic, need cold water to survive. The devastation of the power grid in Kharkiv meant that the aquarium there had to rely on generator power, making it challenging to keep the waters cooled.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
At the same time, the whales\u2019 diets were halved recently amid shortages of the 132 pounds of squid, herring, mackerel and other fresh fish the pair needed daily, Dr. Garcia-P\u00e1rraga said. Ukrainian caregivers were even considering using discarded fish from restaurants and markets.<\/p>\n
And in recent weeks, bombs exploded close enough to ripple the waters of their home at the NEMO Dolphinarium. As the conditions grew more precarious, the Ukrainians decided the whales required evacuation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Moving marine mammals can be risky in the best of circumstances. Transporting sick or stressed animals ratchets up the difficulty.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019d like to make sure that anybody that gets transported is as healthy as possible,\u201d said Michael Walsh, a veterinarian who leads the marine animal rescue program at the University of Florida but was not involved in the operation.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
In emergencies, he said, \u201cyou may not have as much of a choice.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dan Ashe, head of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and the former head of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said it took \u201cthe world\u2019s most elite team of marine mammal experts\u201d to achieve what he said was \u201clikely the most complex marine mammal rescue ever undertaken.\u201d<\/p>\n
Specialists from Oceanogr\u00e0fic de Valencia, Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta and SeaWorld all assisted the Ukrainians in the operation, a 36-hour journey over more than 1,900 miles that started on Monday evening and was completed just before dawn on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Kharkiv might seem an unlikely spot for belugas. But more than 3,500 cetaceans \u2014 a group of animals that includes whales, dolphins and porpoises \u2014 live in captivity globally, said Lori Marino, an expert on cetacean intelligence and captive animal welfare. \u201cI\u2019m not surprised to find captive cetaceans anywhere,\u201d she said in an email.<\/p>\n
Dr. Marino, who is also the president of the Whale Sanctuary Project<\/a>, said cetaceans should not be kept in captivity.<\/p>\n \u201cBut if they are, we have a moral duty to keep them out of harm\u2019s way,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The NEMO Dolphinariums, which operate in several locations across Ukraine, have repeatedly faced accusations of animal abuse. UAnimals, an animal rights group that has evacuated thousands of animals since Russia\u2019s invasion, issued a scathing report<\/a> this year on the dolphinariums.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Olga Chevganiuk, head of the international department for the group, said the dolphinariums \u201cmust be banned in Ukraine right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Natalia Gozak, a wildlife rescue field officer at the International Fund for Animal Welfare who works in Ukraine, said that while the rescue was welcome, the whales should never have been in Kharkiv, noting that there were signs that NEMO had illegally obtained some animals from the wild.<\/p>\n \u201cThey catch marine mammals and use them \u2014 train and use them for entertainment,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s definitely not OK.\u201d<\/p>\n The operators of the NEMO facilities have denied charges of cruelty.<\/p>\n While some seals, dolphins and sea lions were evacuated from the facility, the dolphinarium in Kharkiv is still open. Even though air-raid alerts there can last for more than 16 hours a day, it has dolphin shows.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But as the bombardment of the city intensified, the challenges of caring for the belugas were too great.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Dennis Christen, senior director of animal well-being and behavior at Georgia Aquarium, who met the whales after they had crossed from Ukraine into Moldova, said in an interview that \u201cthe complexities of this evacuation were immense\u201d and that rescuers had worked for weeks to prepare.<\/p>\n Mr. Christen and Dr. Garcia-P\u00e1rraga both said the rescue would have been impossible if <\/span>one of the world\u2019s leading beluga whale experts had not lived in Kharkiv.<\/p>\n