(Moscow) Russia has closed a complex of cramped floating ponds in which captured whales were once crammed in, a situation that sparked outrage around the world, forcing authorities to release cetaceans in 2019.
“In order to prevent the illegal captivity of marine animals, these floating structures have been dismantled,” the Public Prosecutor’s Office in charge of environmental issues in this region of the Russian Far East announced in a statement on Thursday.
These basins, located near the port of Nakhodka on the Pacific Ocean, were used to keep captured belugas and killer whales in captivity, in order to resell them to water parks, especially in China.
In 2019, the publication of photos showing a hundred of these marine mammals crammed into small pools sparked an international outcry, forcing local authorities to release them.
Several environmental and animal rights groups have welcomed the dismantling of these basins.
“This decision is long overdue. We have made a lot of efforts to close (the basins) and release the whales, ”said Dmitri Lissitsine, who heads the NGO Sakhakin Watch.
All the cetaceans that were in captivity in these structures, including 77 belugas, have now returned to the wild.
Mr. Lissitsin explains that the release of the animals was “very difficult” because most of the calves were not used to living in their natural habitat. It was therefore necessary to rehabilitate them gradually.
Russia is the only country in the world that allows the capture and sale of killer whales and beluga whales to aquariums, a controversial practice made possible by legal loopholes authorities have promised to fix.