The uncomfortable truth about aquariums

Young visitors watch the beluga whales at L'Oceanogràfic in Valencia, Spain. | Miguel Candela/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day.

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Four beluga whales have died in a month at one of America’s top-rated aquariums — a tragic development and, arguably, a reason to revisit the ethics of zoos. (More on that in just a minute.) The latest cetacean casualty, a 26-year-old female named Osiris, died at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium yesterday.

She follows 34-year-old Beethoven, a longtime resident of the aquarium, as well as 20-year-old Rain and 23-year-old Peekachu, who died in late August and early September.

Osiris, Rain and Peekachu were all part of the Marineland diaspora: a group of four dolphins and 30 beluga whales that rescuers have worked to relocate since the 2024 closure of a scandal-plagued theme park in Niagara Falls, Canada.

This summer, the animals were successfully transferred to aquariums and marine parks in the US and Spain.

That was a frankly incredible undertaking involving padded shipping containers, a police-escorted convoy and a chartered plane.

But in some regards, the international flight wasn’t even the hardest part of the whales’ journeys.

Some of the animals have struggled to thrive in their new environments — even when those environments are state-of-the-art, like Shedd.

In a blog post announcing Osiris’s death, the aquarium noted that its rescued whales had been under 24-hour supervision and receiving intensive, specialized care.

The aquarium is still investigating the cause of death for all four whales.

Go a little deeper View Link Believe me when I tell you that it gives me no pleasure to write the following paragraphs.

I really love aquariums.

In fact, as a kid, I grew up visiting the now-shuttered and much-maligned Marineland.