Captive Orca News

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wensleydale

Well-Known Member
Interest in captive Killer Whales is so high right now I thought it might be a good idea to have a thread devoted to news about them.

Bad news first:

Bingo of Port of Nagoya Public Aquarium died on August 2, 2014 after an illness. All I could find was in Japanese, it appears that he died despite treatment. Does anyone know how old he was?

http://www.nagoyaaqua.jp/aqua/topi/20140802/index.html
 
Bingo was born ca.1982.

It seems, Russia has captured two more orcas this year. can anybody confirmt hat ?
 
Bib Fortuna said:
Bingo was born ca.1982.

It seems, Russia has captured two more orcas this year. can anybody confirmt hat ?
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According to the Far East Russian Orca Project, yeah.

Speaking of the Russian orcas, are there any confirmed sources on where the animals are going yet? It seems one of the places getting orcas is still being built, (I saw photos, though I can't remember the name of the facility) but other than that, I can't find anything confirmed. Allegedly they're going to different facilities in China and Russia, but no specifics yet.
 
I just read about a ruling that OSHA won in court against Sea World Orlando stating they will not be allowed to have trainers in with whales during shows any more. I am unclear as to whether this applies to the Orlando park only or to all Sea World Parks or to all US marine parks.
 
I thought, Seaworld has stopped to have trainers in the Waters with the animals after the accident in 2010 at Seaworld Orlando ?
 
From what I heard SeaWorld voluntarily stopped immediately after the 2010 incident in order to review their practices, then later OSHA stepped in and forbade them from further waterwork.

Recently Miami Seaquarium was given a citation for allowing waterwork with their Orca (something I think was stupid, because she apparently likes that sort of contact and has no history of aggression towards her trainers, only occasional stubbornness). However from what I heard the ruling only applied to SeaWorld Florida, I don't know what the courts would make of this. Also, the woman who was in change of the OSHA investigation is now herself being investigated, so I don't think the saga is over yet, especially given that SeaWorld can probably afford a good lawyer.
 
SeaWorld San Diego has stopped water work for a while now as well. The only contact made is on those stages the orcas slide onto.
 
Mark Simmons (who worked at SeaWorld, then on the Keiko release project, and participated in (but ultimately ended up denouncing) blackfish) has written a book on the Keiko release project, which has just come out. Does anyone have plans to read it, other than myself (it may be a while though, I will need to go through inter library loan)? The title is "Killing Keiko."
 
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People keep saying that Chimelong Aquarium has purchased some of those captured Russian orcas, but I REALLY don't think it's true. (I mean, if they were getting orcas any time soon, we'd probably be seeing some new tank/arena construction. It's not like that would be easy to hide) Anyone here know anything on the matter? I can see why people might speculate that orcas are going there, but I just don't see any evidence that would confirm it and I'm getting rather annoyed at what appears to be the spread of misinformation.
 
What's up at Marineland Ontario? Did they ever get one of the Russian Orca's that I was told might have been coming there? I see nothing on Cetabase, just Kiska (whom I would love to relocate to a park with a better reputation.
 
wensleydale said:
What's up at Marineland Ontario? Did they ever get one of the Russian Orca's that I was told might have been coming there? I see nothing on Cetabase, just Kiska (whom I would love to relocate to a park with a better reputation.
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It was rumored that they were going to get a Russian whale, (supposedly people saw trucks going in and out) but those rumors kind of dropped when the park opened up and there were no new whales. I'm pretty sure it was a baseless rumor.

As of now, it's really unclear where the Russian orcas are going. Apparently there is a permit for two of the whales to be shipped to China. (many speculate that they're going to Chimelong, but as I said, not much basis for that) A while back I read that there was some resort or something in Dubai that was planning on getting an orca (though I don't know if it was necessarily a Russian orca) but I'm having trouble finding anything on that as well, so the resort may have dropped those plans. I follow the Facebook page for the Far East Russian Orca Project, and they do updates on these whales, but they also seem to have a hard time getting information. I found an older post that mentions the orca captors saying they successfully sold an orca to the unopened Primorsky Aquarium, although the aquarium's website makes no mention of plans to hold orcas. I'm a bit surprised that none of these whales have popped up on display anywhere yet.

Anyway... I remember a while back people in another thread were trying to figure out if Tilikum was a resident or transient orca. I recently remembered that transients and residents can sometimes be told apart by their teeth. If someone can find an older photo of him where his teeth are still intact (I saw such a picture a long time ago, but I don't know how to locate it) maybe it would offer some evidence.
 
wensleydale said:
An article on the dietary habits of the North Atlantic Killer Whales. It seems that they could be eating herring one day and baby seals the next:

North Atlantic Killer Whales May Be Branching Into Two Species

Blurry Photo of him in Iceland, eating a fish, includes an especially blurry piece view of part of his front teeth:

Morgunblaðið, 29.11.1983 - Timarit.is

A better view of his front teeth from the mid nineties:

The Argus-Press - Google News Archive Search
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Yeah, there isn't always a precise line between diet preferences. Some populations are pickier than others. Plus the tooth differences are based on research in Pacific NW populations, so it might not apply to whales from other places. Granted, it a population has been eating a certain diet for a long time, it would almost certainly evolve traits for it. The transient whale teeth have more of a curve, I imagine to help them hold onto prey better. (meanwhile, fish-eating whales don't really use their teeth to hunt)
 
The Far East Russian Orca Project Facebook page has just posted more on captured orcas:

"Russian orca capture activities move into high gear: In recent days we can now confirm more details about orca capture activities in the Okhotsk Sea. Two orcas removed from the wild in mid-July, already reported, have since been shipped to China. Now we have learned that two more orcas were captured in late July. Are these captures legal? Order RPN 4 August 2014 from the Russian Federal Fisheries Agency granted a quota of up to 10 killer whales that could be taken from the Okhotsk Sea for the year 2014, but this order came after the captures. These and other issues will e discussed on 22nd September at the Russian Marine Mammal Biennial Conference in St Petersburg, where there will be a roundtable on the business of orca captures in Russia. We’ll report more about that meeting in a couple weeks. To date, the fate of the two newly captured orcas is unknown."

With so many orcas being captured, I'm surprised we haven't seen any on public display yet. What's with that? And still nothing confirmed on what facilities they're going to, I still can't find anything beyond speculation and rumors.
 
I hate to stereotype but welcome to Russia. Good luck finding out anything anytime soon, good luck getting it to follow any logical progression.

Maybe there was never any intent to put most of them on display.
 
wensleydale said:
I hate to stereotype but welcome to Russia. Good luck finding out anything anytime soon, good luck getting it to follow any logical progression.

Maybe there was never any intent to put most of them on display.
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I was just thinking, if aquariums or theme parks have bought these animals, I figured they would've announced the upcoming arrivals and tried to put the animals on display as soon as possible. That's why I think it's weird. I would expect the captors to be secretive, but if some place bought one for public display, I would think they'd be more than happy to announce. As far as I'm aware, Russia doesn't have much of a free-the-whales movement. Many of the places the whales are expected to go to are still being built, and it seems this currently unfinished aquarium in Moscow bought two of them. (there are a few construction photos floating around online) I dunno. My guess is that a lot of the places getting them might've just gone after them when they went on the market without having time to prepare, rather than building a whale tank first and then going "here's some money, catch us some orcas". Large-scale orca captures haven't been a thing in a long time, so it could've taken these facilities by surprise.

Be interesting if they're not being caught for display, though I don't really know what else they could be used for.

The companies that captured them are Belyi Kit and Sochinsky Delphinariy, but I can't really find much info on these guys.
 
Bib Fortuna said:
I thought, this aquarium already got orcas from the last years russian import.
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That's been said, it's just hard to find good sources on the matter. This is the first reliable, confirmed news source I've seen. (there have been a lot of speculation and rumors) They don't have the whales yet, the animals are still being held somewhere in the east.
 
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