Finding homes for whales and dolphins when parks close isn’t easy—sea sanctuaries aren’t the answer

When Marineland Canada in Niagara Falls, Ontario, closed in September 2024, it had no regular income to support the care of the 30 belugas and four dolphins housed there. To ensure their welfare, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums led an international effort to relocate the animals to the United States and Spain.

After the move, however, one resident beluga and three transplanted belugas died at a U.S. facility, while one beluga died at a Spanish facility. Proponents of whale sanctuaries called for the Canadian belugas to be placed in netted ocean pens, arguing that these environments better suit them.

Sanctuaries may seem like the easiest solution for displaced whales and dolphins—collectively called cetaceans. However, these ocean pens have their own challenges and aren’t always the best fit.

A cetacean sanctuary is an ocean enclosure made of nets that provides animals with a large habitat. But this model isn’t defined only by its environment. It’s also defined by a philosophy emphasizing no breeding, reduced human interaction and nonprofit funding.

Currently, there are no active cetacean sanctuaries anywhere in the world operating with animals under these standards.

In specific circumstances, sanctuaries could provide a home for animals vulnerable in the wild, while preserving some of their autonomy. But for an animal that has never seen the ocean, a sanctuary isn’t automatically a good fit. What is natural for wild cetaceans isn’t necessarily natural for managed cetaceans.

As a cetacean biologist, I have over 20 years of experience working with animals in the wild as well as in professional care.

My work has focused on understanding the welfare of these animals as individuals, and I’ve seen how wild and managed animals can differ. Moving a cetacean that was born in, or has spent years in, human care into an unfamiliar sea pen can create challenges.

A sanctuary is still captivity

The word “sanctuary” carries an emotional appeal, but a sanctuary is still a form of captivity. It is not release, which would be illegal for almost all animals currently under human care.

In cetacean sanctuaries, animals remain behind nets and depend on people for food and veterinary care. Managers must control the animals’ social groups, monitor their health and respond to environmental hazards.

Consider a dolphin born in a pool and accustomed to humans, a familiar social group and daily individualized medical care. Moving it to an ocean enclosure changes its conditions substantially. Differences can include water chemistry, ocean sounds, currents and weather. Porous netting may expose cetaceans to new pathogens, parasites or unfamiliar species.

Cetaceans could even become entangled with no way to rescue them, acres away from people. Access to the animals for daily veterinary care is also more complicated in a 100-acre (about half a square kilometer) sea pen.

Animal welfare depends on many factors: the animal’s health, social relationships, nutrition, ability to make choices about how it spends its time, cognitive stimulation and whether its environment is appropriately predictable. The animals need enough change to keep them engaged, but not so much that it overwhelms them and causes harmful stress. Caregivers cannot assume what is natural to animals born or housed under human care is the same as what is natural to a wild animal.

Whether a zoo-born cetacean benefits from a sanctuary is a hypothesis to test, not a fact to assume.

We have tried this before

Historically, cetacean sanctuaries have struggled to get off the ground.

After 10 years, The Whale Sanctuary Project in Nova Scotia, Canada, is still trying to raise funding and hasn’t built its 100-acre sea pen.

Similar startup troubles have plagued The National Aquarium in Baltimore, which also pledged to place its animals in a sanctuary about 10 years ago but has not yet done so.

Dolphin Project founder Ric O’Barry’s sanctuary in Bali, Indonesia, did attempt to house four animals taken from the Melka Excelsior Hotel in Lovina. However, one animal died soon after arriving, and another died after a release attempt.

O’Barry also attempted to release two former Navy dolphins, Buck and Luther, in the 1990s from his now-defunct Florida-based Sugarloaf Sanctuary. This effort ended with the rescue of both animals, one in critical condition. O’Barry was convicted of violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act and was fined.

SEA LIFE Trust Beluga Whale Sanctuary has made multiple attempts to place two belugas named Little White and Little Grey from a Chinese aquarium into a sanctuary it built in Iceland. However, a 2025 review reported that both belugas spent 92.6% of their time in a conventional indoor pool rather than their sanctuary. While in the sanctuary, they exhibited stress behaviors and had feeding difficulties, with one animal even developing ulcers. It remains unclear whether the whales will ever inhabit, much less thrive in, their sanctuary.

These examples do not prove sanctuaries cannot work. They demonstrate that these types of enclosures are hard to develop, fund and manage. They also show that animals don’t readily adapt to these environments.

Where science and activism can collide

Animal welfare understandably involves strong moral convictions. I believe that humans have a responsibility to provide the animals in our care with the best lives possible.

But moral convictions are not enough in welfare science. These values must be informed by scientific conclusions.

If you start with a belief that captivity is intrinsically wrong, you may conclude that moving an animal out of any marine park will automatically improve its welfare. But that claim isn’t always reflected in the established science.

A 2020 review found that pro-cetacean sanctuary publications often include cherry-picked data and embellishments of other studies’ results to fit an anti-zoo narrative. They may ignore or dismiss studies that show managed animals have begun to outlive wild ones and have seen welfare improvements over decades, while conditions for wild cetaceans have worsened.

A better way to understand cetacean welfare

The Cetacean Welfare Study provides a useful example of how scientific data can inform these management decisions.

Researchers asked which environmental and management characteristics are associated with better animal well-being. To measure welfare, they looked at how active the animals were, how they used their habitats and how many different types of behaviors they exhibited. They also analyzed the animals’ stress hormones and other biological indicators.

The study included more than 200 individual animals across three species in 43 accredited zoos and aquariums. Using these measures, researchers assessed how the animals’ social environment, training, habitat—size, type and access—and enrichment affected their well-being.

Its findings challenged assumptions. Larger habitats did not predict good welfare. Who the animals socialized with—both humans and cetaceans—and the diversity of enrichment approaches were much better indicators.

This study does not claim every animal in professional care is thriving or suffering, or that one type of environment is inherently better. It demonstrates that welfare depends on many variables.

How do we make the best choices for these animals?

Not all cetaceans are interchangeable. A 60-year-old wild-caught adult orca, an 8-year-old stranded wild-born dolphin and a rescued newborn beluga likely require different welfare interventions.

Best practices suggest that these decisions should be based on individual assessments. Before a nonemergency transfer, professionals establish the animal’s baseline health, behavior, relationships and stress measures, then track those individual measures afterward. If welfare improves, the data should show it. If it deteriorates, professionals can change course.

The failure of the belugas in Iceland to acclimate to their sanctuary suggests future plans for cetacean sanctuaries should include standby pools for emergencies, so managers can move the animals out of the sanctuary if there’s a problem or they notice an animal’s stress rising rapidly.

Sanctuaries can provide another option for rescued animals. But to work long term, sanctuary managers will need to follow the science. Even before sanctuaries are built, managers can test protocols for introducing animals into these habitats and understand the animals’ space preferences.

If sanctuaries have definable metrics of success, the public, outside researchers and accreditation groups can all follow their progress toward their welfare goals. These data, if made public, would prove valuable for scientists.

Keeping marine animals in sanctuaries is also more expensive than housing them in pools. For the orca from Free Willy—whose real name was Keiko—a failed release cost around US$20 million to US$30 million for about five years of sea-pen housing. These examples show that sanctuaries need to have multiple years of animal care funding and plausible revenue streams before they move forward with construction.

Sanctuaries, as a concept, are not inherently good or bad. Just as with any other animal welfare intervention, proponents will need to show proof that they can work.

Who’s behind this story?

Gaby Clark

MA in English, copy editor since 2021 with experience in higher education and health content. Dedicated to trustworthy science news.

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Andrew Zinin

Master’s in physics with research experience. Long-time science news enthusiast. Plays key role in Science X’s editorial success.

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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.