Largest marine mammal rescue in history: beluga whale edition

It's literally the largest marine mammal transport and rescue mission in history. So in 2024 a marine park in Ontario, Canada closed its doors and over the course of the last two years they have lost the ability to take care of the animals. They were trying to find a new place for 30 beluga whales to be rehomed. So this is a gigantic rescue effort for these 30 whales to be relocated into accredited facilities. It probably goes without saying but this was a massive undertaking with a full year of planning countless meetings and over 200 people working to make sure that these animals whose natural habitat is in the arctic were able to be transported safely in summer. And essentially what happens is these whales go into a stretcher and they get lifted out of the water and they go into a transport box which is a little bit larger than them and filled with a little bit of water and so after they get into that transport box they get put onto a truck they go onto a plane and then they fly to the particular location that they're going to. So it's air beluga. Air beluga exactly right. That's 30 whales that needed to travel by plane internationally in insulated boxes to aquariums all over the globe. SeaWorld San Diego, SeaWorld San Antonio, Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, even Oceanographic in Spain and two to Georgia Aquarium Baller and Zephyr who we got to go see. There are four females that were currently residing before the boys joined us. You can see them all kind of hanging out together. They're slow swimming, they're interacting with each other. Sometimes you can see all six of them kind of just moving as a big slow group throughout the habitat and that's exactly what we want to see. And for a weathery added bonus, Zephyr literally means a gentle mild breeze or a light west wind. He's a weather whale.