Vancouver Aquarium History of the Vancouver Aquarium narwhal program

[DavidBrown]

The Vancouver Aquarium had a brief and disastrous narwhal exhibit in 1970 that resulted in a lot of media hoopla and six dead young narwhals. This article recounts that history in detail.

Was this the last time that anybody tried to exhibit live narwhals? Hopefully it was.


https://vancouversun.com/opinion/op...iDiY9zf5wG7fBJdQB_2_rBLT3pKQows8_ztvmDnc5as20

 

[JurassicMax]

Interesting article! So only New york and Vancouver have had narwhals or did more zoos/aquariums have them?
Did they ever find out how the narwhals died, like malnourishment?

 

[snowleopard]

In Murray Newman's autobiography Life in a Fishbowl: Confessions of an Aquarium Director (1994) he devotes 4 pages to the capture and experience of obtaining 6 narwhals and he was the director of the Vancouver Aquarium for decades. The 3 calves died of pneumonia, the two larger females died of bacterial infections and the big male (9 feet, 7 inches long and 900 pounds) died of an abscessed lung. Newman's theory is that the aquarium needed a "refrigerated seawater system" and he "suspected the warmer water in Vancouver was an underlying cause of death" even though the belugas were doing fine in adjacent pools.