Tofino approached each of his handlers in turn as they knelt in shallow water and stroked his sides. Shortly after, a crane hoisted the more than 1,500kg beluga whale into a lorry to be shipped out of Canada to his new home, SeaWorld San Antonio - the last of 30 belugas and four dolphins to leave Marineland, a shuttered sea park near Niagara Falls. Marineland needed to find a new home for its whales.
But when the Canadian government rejected its plan to sell them to China over concerns about animal welfare, the park's operations said they would have to be euthanised. That spurred an international rescue operation by several aquariums, leading to the largest ever transfer of captive whales this summer. But hopes that the animals were headed to a better life have been dampened by a number of deaths in the group.
Photographer Carlos Osorio documented the move, which involved whales being flown to Chicago, Atlanta, San Diego, San Antonio, and even Valencia, Spain. Osorio recalls watching footage from a drone overhead as Tofino appeared to say his own goodbyes. Tofino was the last captive whale in Canada.
The country banned cetacean captivity and breeding seven years ago, and Osorio felt the weight of the moment. "This is the last one to happen, and it's never going to happen again," he says. Despite the rescue operation, tragically, five of the belugas have since died, as well as one dolphin.
Chicago's Shedd Aquarium has seen the most deaths. Peekachu, 23, Rain, 20, Orisis, 26, and Caspian, 27, were all transferred from Marineland, while longtime Shedd resident Beethoven, 34, also died after eight Marineland belugas were brought there over the summer. Necropsies found chronic inflammatory disease in the gastrointestinal systems in Peekachu and Rain.
Foreign objects were also discovered in their stomachs, including feathers, large rocks and flecks that appear to be paint – objects Shedd believes were ingested before they were moved to Chicago. Osiris's preliminary examination identified chronic liver disease. Europe's largest aquarium, Oceanogràfic València in Spain, recorded the death of one beluga, Jelly Bean, and one dolphin, Echo.
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