Captive Belugas Take First Swim in Iceland's Open Waters

[douglas9]

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AFP) — Two beluga whales from a Shanghai aquarium have taken their first swim in open waters as part of their acclimatization to an Icelandic sea sanctuary, conservationists said Monday.

Little White and Little Grey, two 13-year-old females, left the Changfeng Ocean World in June 2019 and were flown to Iceland’s Klettsvik Bay in the Westman Islands in specially tailored containers.

More than a year later, in August, they were moved from their land-based facility to care pools in the sea at Klettsvik Bay, the first time they had been in the sea since they were taken from a Russian research center in 2011.

On Monday, the conservation charity Sea Life Trust said the belugas had been “released for the first time to fully explore the natural surroundings” of the wider sea sanctuary at Klettsvik Bay.

The sanctuary is a 32,000-square-metre (344,445-square-foot) sea pen that will become their home.

https://www.courthousenews.com/captive-belugas-take-first-swim-in-icelands-open-waters/

[Bayard]

1. Its too bad they can't just be released in the ocean

But, they would not survive after being taken care of for so long by humans.

"Klettsvik is also where Keiko, the killer whale from the 1993 film “Free Willy”, was flown in 1998. The orca was fully released in 2002 but did not manage to adapt to life in the wild and died 18 months later in a Norwegian fjord."