- In August 2025, Canada’s only entertainment park with cetaceans, Marineland of Canada, closed for good, prompting concern about the fate of 30 beluga whales and four dolphins remaining at the facility.
- After a plan to transfer them to a theme park in China was blocked by the Canadian government, Marineland called for euthanizing the animals. The Canadian government has now conditionally approved their possible transfer to four U.S. institutions.
- Keeping highly intelligent and social creatures in concrete-lined tanks adversely affects their health and well-being, experts say.
- With changing public perceptions and a growing number of countries, including Canada, banning the keeping and breeding of whales and dolphins, conservationists are calling for alternatives to house the more than 3,700 cetaceans in captivity worldwide, including building seaside sanctuaries.
For about three decades, beluga whales and bottlenose dolphins greeted more than a million annual visitors to Marineland of Canada. In the sprawling 162-hectare (400-acre) theme park, located a stone’s throw from the world-famous Niagara Falls in Ontario, Canada, dozens of cetaceans enthralled visitors — splashing, spyhopping and leaping in their concrete-lined tanks.
Marineland’s peppy jingle, “Everyone loves Marineland,” evoked a happy place where love transcended species, and people and marine mammals shared joy. But what the cameras didn’t show was their lives after showtime. Twenty whales — 19 belugas (Delphinapterus leucas) and one killer whale (Orcinus orca) — died between 2019 and 2025. Multiple charges of animal abuse surfaced in the 2010s, though some were later withdrawn. And a 2021 animal welfare inspection found marine animals in distress due to poor water quality in their tanks. In late 2024, Ontario’s animal welfare inspectors said they had visited the park more than 200 times since 2020 for inspections and investigations.
In 2018, Marineland’s owner died, and a year later, Canada passed the landmark Ending the Captivity of Whales and Dolphins Act, which banned the keeping, breeding and trading of cetaceans for entertainment. By then, movies such as Blackfish and Free Willy had changed the public perception of captive dolphins and whales. The lively jingle had turned sour in many people’s minds. In 2021, Marineland became Canada’s last remaining entertainment park with cetaceans.
“By 2024, there were signs that Marineland was closing,” Melissa Matlow, Canadian campaign director at the international NGO World Animal Protection, told Mongabay in an interview. “They had already started to sell some of their animals and close some of the exhibits, so it was a reduced ticket price just to see belugas and a few other animals.”
It closed for the season later that year, but Marineland never reopened in 2025. Instead, it shuttered its doors forever. But 30 belugas, four dolphins, three seals and two sea lions remained in the park, their future uncertain. After much jostling between the theme park and the Canadian government over the last six months, and several solutions proposed and rejected, including euthanasia, the cetaceans now appear to have taken a step closer to finding new homes in the U.S.
While Marineland’s whales and dolphins may have a happy ending in this case, the situation presents a reckoning for countries transitioning away from holding cetaceans in concrete tanks for entertainment: How should they deal with the animals already in those tanks? Around the world, more than 3,700 cetaceans — whales, dolphins and porpoises — are kept in theme parks and aquariums, and many of them can’t just be released back into the ocean.
“It’s messy, it’s going to lead to some animal suffering, more than they already are,” Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist at the U.S.-based Animal Welfare Institute, told Mongabay. “When society shifts and decides to do something very different with a marginalized group than they were doing before … It’s always messy.”
Failed sale, threats of euthanasia loom
After news of Marineland’s closure surfaced, drone video from late July 2025 showed the remaining belugas and dolphins circling in their pens while staff fed and petted them. In September, the theme park requested the federal government’s permission to sell the remaining belugas to a similar facility in China.
Since beluga whales are listed on Appendix II of CITES, the international wildlife trade treaty, international commercial trade of the species is regulated with import/export permits. In addition, the Canadian fisheries minister must authorize any export with a Fisheries Act permit. But days after the request, the minister denied the permit, saying she couldn’t approve the sale “in good conscience” as the belugas would continue to be used for entertainment.
Citing its inability to care for the animals because it was in “a critical financial state,” Marineland demanded the federal government pay for the whales’ upkeep. Otherwise, it said, it would have to euthanize them.
That threat alarmed the public and conservationists and led to a few possible solutions. One was to send the whales to an under-construction whale sanctuary in Nova Scotia province; Marineland turned it down, citing concerns with water quality. Another was an Inuit-led offer to place them in Hudson Bay in Canada’s north and reintegrate them into the wild. Yet another came from a town on the island of Newfoundland, proposing a sanctuary for the belugas in a sheltered cove there.
But Marineland, which owns the animals, picked a fourth alternative. In January, it again asked for federal permission to send the whales and dolphins abroad, this time to four U.S. institutions accredited with the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA): Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut, Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, and an unspecified SeaWorld location.
In late January, the fisheries minister conditionally approved these transfers, provided an accredited veterinarian gave the cetaceans a clean bill of health and Marineland shared a plan to transport the animals, according to CBC, the state media network. A previous transfer of five belugas in 2021 from Marineland to Mystic Aquarium ended with the deaths of three of the animals within 18 months.
Marineland didn’t respond to any of Mongabay’s questions, including about the conditions of the transfer or the timeline.
In separate but identical statements to Mongabay, spokespersons from the Shedd, Georgia and Mystic aquariums said “it is still too early to say exactly where the belugas may go or on what timetable.” They stressed their experts are focused on ensuring that any potential plan is “rooted in science and responds to the physical and social needs of the belugas.” They didn’t answer specific questions about whether the belugas would be bred or used for entertainment. SeaWorld didn’t respond to any of Mongabay’s questions.
In a statement to Mongabay, an AZA spokesperson confirmed that experts from four AZA-accredited facilities recently visited Marineland “to assess the care and physical condition of the whales” and said these whales, if transferred, would “receive the very best care available anywhere in the world.” She also said AZA-accredited aquariums had rescued beluga whales from Kharkiv, Ukraine, that are now thriving at the Oceanogràfic aquarium in Valencia, Spain. That transfer happened in June 2024.
“We are relieved that there is a potential path forward and are following the situation closely,” said Matlow from World Animal Protection. But she said the decision “happened under extreme pressure” with threats of euthanasia looming. “That’s not how animal welfare decisions should ever be made, and these animals’ lives shouldn’t be used as a bargaining tactic.”
Call for governments on both sides of the border to act
For years, activists have expressed concerns over Marineland’s animals.
At one point, the facility was home to nearly 1,000 fallow deer. It also had the highest number of beluga whales in captivity — nearly 60 — at one time, many caught in the wild in Russian waters, and had a successful beluga-breeding program to continue the cycle of captivity.
“[Marineland] should never have been allowed to have that many animals in the first place,” Matlow said. “We strongly believe that this animal welfare crisis at Marineland could have been prevented if Ontario had stronger rules.”
If the four U.S. institutions decide to move ahead with the beluga and dolphin transfer, they also need permits from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. agency in charge of implementing the country’s Marine Mammal Protection Act. This would be a chance for the agency to add a condition that the institutions could not breed the belugas after the transfer, said Rose from the Animal Welfare Institute. “That’s my red line in the sand — don’t make more of them,” she said.
After Canada passed its 2019 ban on marine mammals in captivity, the beluga whales at Marineland have been separated by sex so they don’t breed. When five belugas were sent to Mystic Aquarium in 2021, the NOAA permit required adherence to an approved breeding prevention plan.
“The days of keeping animals for entertainment, I think, are coming to an end,” Matlow said. “We just need the government to catch up to public attitudes.”
In February 2026, the two remaining sea lions in Marineland, both females, were transferred to Vancouver Aquarium to join a male there. The fate of the three seals remains unclear.
Sanctuaries as an alternative to captivity
In the wild, whales and dolphins travel tens of thousands of kilometers to hunt for their food, which is diverse. But keeping cetaceans in concrete tanks compromises their well-being, said Rose, whose three-decade-long research has looked at how captivity affects them. Bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops spp.), orcas and belugas all die young in captivity, unlike many other zoo animals. Driven by stereotypy — repeated behavior seen in many zoo animals that indicates stress — cetaceans grind their teeth to nubs, resulting in cavities, and develop metabolic diseases such as hemochromatosis (excess iron in the blood). Inbreeding also makes them prone to genetic diseases.
“It’s really, really clear cut,” Rose said. “You put a large, wide-ranging carnivore in confinement, and they are going to, at the very best, develop neurosis, and at the very worst, develop serious health problems. So any argument that the industry makes that we’re making their lives easier … in captivity fails on its face.”
But setting these animals free in the wild is also not always an option. They have been reliant on humans for food, some since birth, so they’re not equipped with hunting and other social skills needed to thrive in the ocean. Sanctuaries can be the middle ground for some of the world’s remaining captive cetaceans, conservationists say. “They will do far better in terms of welfare on a daily basis if they have more natural surroundings as well as human care,” Rose said.
One such sanctuary dedicated to whales is being developed off the coast of Nova Scotia at an estimated cost of $3.5 million. The Whale Sanctuary Project is a 40-hectare (100-acre) seaside enclosure with nets that will hold formerly captive cetaceans in the ocean, but with humans continuing to feed and care for them.
“We give them the natural environment, a natural bottom [with] critters to interact with, waves and cold and all of that nature,” Charles Vinick, the sanctuary’s CEO, told Mongabay.
Vinick was involved in the initiative that released Keiko, the orca who played Willy in the movie Free Willy and that became the first orca to be fully released into the wild in 2002.
The sanctuary says it hopes to welcome its first whales, two orcas named Keijo and Wikie from a theme park also called Marineland in Antibes, France, in mid-2026. That park, unrelated to the one in Canada, closed in January 2025. France, too, has outlawed keeping cetaceans in captivity, and the government has suggested the sanctuary in Nova Scotia would be a better place for the last two orcas in the country.
But the French Marineland has yet to agree to it, Vinick said. “These are whales … that have entertained millions of people. They have made millions of dollars for their owners. Aren’t they owed a pension? Aren’t they owed retirement?”
Worldwide, seaside sanctuaries are gaining traction: Iceland has a beluga sanctuary and Mexico is building one for dolphins. But there’s never going to be enough space for all 3,700-plus cetaceans in captivity worldwide, because building and maintaining these sanctuaries is expensive.
If the world transitions away from keeping whales and dolphins in concrete tanks, a more realistic approach would be to keep most of the animals already in captivity where they are and not bring in more from the wild, or trade or breed them, said Rose, who is a founding board member of the Whale Sanctuary Project. Some healthy ones could find homes in sanctuaries, and the very lucky few could eventually be released in the wild, she added. “It’s practical. It’s pragmatic and ideal.”
Banner image: Visitors interact with belugas at Marineland of Canada, in 2001. At one point, the facility had nearly 60 belugas, the most of any such facility in the world, and ran a successful breeding operation before Canada enacted a law banning cetaceans in captivity in 2019. Image by rdoroshenko via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).
Spoorthy Raman is a staff writer at Mongabay, covering all things wild with a special focus on lesser-known wildlife, the wildlife trade, and environmental crime.
Citations:
Marino, L., Doyle, C., Rally, H., O’Brien, L., Tennison, M., & Jacobs, B. (2025). An update on captive cetacean welfare. PeerJ, 13, e19878. doi:10.7717/peerj.19878
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