Stunning New Documentary Shines a Light on the Plight of Captive Beluga Whales

With brains larger than our own, there is little doubt that beluga whales are extremely intelligent beings. They can even mimic our speech! But one thing they’re clearly not adept at is living under human entrapment.

Captivity is torturous, disgraceful and downright criminal for these animals who thrive in pods and are meant to explore vast underwater distances but are instead imprisoned in decrepit tanks far too small for them.

Take, for example, baby Gia, who was separated from her mother “by accident” and left isolated and alone in a tiny tank at Marineland Canada for months, causing her to become extremely emaciated. Sadly, Gia is not anything close to an anomaly. An investigation carried out by Last Chance for Animals found all of Marineland Canada’s 46 belugas living in small concrete enclosures and most clearly suffering from medical conditions, such as “hypersalivation, regurgitation, and raw, red throats, in some cases for prolonged periods of time.” The report went on to note that the babies of the bunch were also covered with rake marks from aggressive encounters with other whales, due to these animals being forced together under stressful circumstances and being regularly starved as a training tactic. This is the reality for captive belugas the world over.

Being forced to endure such an unnatural existence regularly causes these animals immense mental and physical distress, and many, like Nanuq and Qila, end up dying much too young.

But that’s only the half of it because many more die before even reaching these desolate destinations while undergoing the vile process of being ripped from the wild and subjected to so-called “training” for captivity. Upon being violently seized from the Arctic waters north of Russia, the confused cetaceans spend six months “learning” how to adapt to a life of captivity so that their captors can rake in a higher price when the whales are later sold to marine entertainment parks like SeaWorld and Marineland.

This traumatic journey of being stolen from the wild, trained for captivity, and subsequently locked up for life, all for human entertainment and greed, is the subject of the documentary entitled “Born to Be Free,” which is available on Netflix. You can watch the trailer below, and what you’ll see is utterly heartbreaking.

These beautiful, intelligent, and highly exploited beings deserve so much better, and since the industry surely won’t change on its own, it’s up to us to stop these crimes and #EmptyTheTanks once and for all. This is entirely possible if we end the demand that funds and fuels these activities. That means boycotting any company or place that supports the abduction and captivity of these amazing animals. Please do your part by:

• Vowing to never visit another marine animal park

• Spreading the word and sharing this information with everyone you know

• Contacting your representatives and advocating for laws that forbid cetacean captivity

Image source: Born to Be Free