Inside the Wild Rescue Mission That Took 4 Beluga Whales to Chicago

One of the astir important parts of pulling disconnected an unprecedented planetary level thrust for 4 beluga whales is making definite they don’t adjacent recognize that they’re connected a trip. “The extremity is that they announcement arsenic small arsenic possible,” says Karina Tang, the pb veterinarian and vice president of carnal wellness astatine Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium.

Tang and Charlie Jacobsma, the Shedd’s manager of carnal behaviour and training, some accompanied beluga whales Acadia, Lillooet, Osiris, and Sierra connected the travel from their Niagara Falls enclosures to Toronto’s Pearson Airport to Chicago. Two further belugas joined the formation connected a chartered Boeing 777 freighter, but were past transported to an aquarium successful San Antonio.

The whales were surviving successful Marineland of Niagara Falls, a notorious, longrunning aquarium and amusement parkland that went bankrupt aft the decease of its owners and closed to the nationalist successful 2024. As it ran retired of wealth to attraction for the animals, the parkland had antecedently implored the Canadian authorities for assistance. In 2025, Marineland announced that it had made the “devastating decision” to see euthanasia if it could not relocate the animals.

At that point, the wider aquarium and marine biology satellite was already discussing what could beryllium done; by January 2026, members of the rescue squad were flying to Ontario to measure however they’d transport the belugas. In June, Canada reached an statement with Marineland to let this rehoming process, successful which animals whitethorn spell to a consortium of aquariums successful Georgia, San Diego, and Spain, successful summation to the whales already transferred to Chicago and Texas institutions. It was an unprecedented mission. “People person moved belugas before,” Tang says. “But thing of this standard had not been done.”

It each went astir arsenic smoothly arsenic moving thousand-plus-pound water-dwelling mammals hundreds of miles could person gone: “Beautiful, nice, dilatory takeoff and a bully casual landing,” Jacobsma tells WIRED. The squad was capable to enactment adjacent to the whales, perpetually monitoring them and “pouring h2o connected their backs, making definite that they were comfortable.”

A fewer days aft the transport, connected a sunny Friday afternoon, visitors to the Shedd’s Oceanarium conception are greeted with signs asking for quiet. “Please support voices low,” they read. “Help the rescued belugas acclimate to their caller home.” WIRED peeked into a secluded habitat, which is nether round-the-clock surveillance by veterinarians and different marine beingness experts, wherever Acadia, Lillooet, Osiris, and Sierra are presently kept retired of show of the nationalist truthful their caller stewards tin absorption connected settling them into their caller home.