Death for the graceful young beluga whales, known to animal trainers as Nos. 4 and 6, came in the chilly waters of a 30,000-gallon marine mammal medical pool at the Shedd Aquarium on South Lake Shore Drive.
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In 55 frantic minutes Tuesday morning, a routine weekly physical examination had turned into tragedy. The whales became ill after receiving injections, and despite desperate emergency medical efforts, their breathing stopped.
Barely a month since they came to the Shedd`s Oceanarium from the wilds of Canada`s Churchill River, they were dead.
”It was one of those awful situations you hope you never have to deal with,” said Ken Ramirez, the Oceanarium`s training supervisor and assistant curator. ”It still feels like your worst dream come true.”
On Wednesday afternoon, finned and furry sea creatures were on display as usual at the aquarium, but visitors also stared into the jaws of the modern animal captivity debate.
Before the trainers signaled the slick-backed dolphins to begin the afternoon show, the aquarium staff had a somber message to deliver about captivity and the death of whales.
Two of the aquarium`s six beluga whales died Tuesday after receiving treatment for parasites, and trainers were willing to talk openly about it, said Ramirez, who was wearing a wetsuit and a microphone.
Did anyone have any questions? he asked.
About a dozen people raised their hands, and the questions they asked were pointed and informed. On Wednesday, the aquarium became a center for people seeking knowledge of marine life, as much as a place to take the kids for entertainment. The whales` death had accomplished that.
Canadian officials responded to the deaths by banning further hunts by the aquarium until it explains the cause of the deaths.
The earliest that Shedd would be allowed to hunt for more whales in Canada is the summer of 1994 because of deadlines in the permit process, according to Burton Ayles, director general for fish and habitat management for Canada`s central and Arctic regions.
Ayles said Wednesday that the process would require a detailed report on the deaths of the two whales.
Canada also has dispatched a biologist to Chicago to participate in the investigation into the deaths, Ayles said in a telephone interview from Winnipeg.
On Wednesday night, after a day spent trying to puzzle out what went wrong, an exhausted Ramirez recounted what had happened.
At 8:05 a.m. Tuesday, 11 aquarium staffers, including Ramirez and Dr. Jeff Boehm, the Shedd`s chief veterinarian, were in the pool, an isolated facility hidden from public view under the grandstands of the 1 1/2-year-old Oceanarium. Four juvenile belugas had been staying there in the month since they arrived at the aquarium.
They received a physical examination every Tuesday morning, which included taking blood samples and fecal cultures and weighing each whale to measure the anticipated weight gain.
”The only thing different we planned Tuesday was to administer some anti-parasitic drugs because there was evidence at least a couple of them had some worms,” Ramirez said.
To administer the drugs, workers placed a female whale in a sling, took a fecal culture and then used syringes to inject two medicines in muscles below her dorsal ridge.
But as Boehm began taking blood samples, the whale began struggling with two handlers holding her firmly in the sling. Struggling was not
characteristic.
”She finally forced her way out of the stretcher,” Ramirez said, ”so we stood back and watched her swim around. She seemed to calm down. We decided to let her swim for a while and take it easy, while we went ahead with No. 6.”
At about 8:20 a.m., Boehm had given No. 6, a male beluga, the first of the two anti-parasite injections when a handler noticed that No. 4 was swimming erratically and her tail was convulsing. The veterinarian
administered resuscitative drugs to stimulate the female`s heart, and almost immediately, Ramirez said, the whale seemed revived.
Marty Greenwall, another aquarium veterinarian, had arrived, but it was too late. By then, No. 6, a whale that had endeared himself to the staff, was swimming erratically as well.
”Very few words were being spoken other than each of us calling out heartbeats, respiration rates and eye movements as we held the animals,”
Ramirez said. ”Many of us in the last 15 minutes realized what had happened. We realized we had lost these two whales, and all of us were fighting back tears all that time.”
But making sense of the deaths won`t come until later, at least not until the autopsy results are released in two or three weeks, and possibly not even then. The death of captive animals spawns long-running arguments, especially when the animals involved are awesome in size and potent in symbolism.
”These animals were taken from the wild,” said Adrian Doherty, 15, who was visiting from Ireland. ”If they hadn`t been given that drug, they wouldn`t have died here. Unless there was any question they weren`t going to make it in the wild, they should have been left there.”
While Doherty and others said that whales should not be placed in captivity unless there is a compelling medical need, some visitors said putting animals in artificial environments is appropriate.
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”If they`re being put in a case that`s well-controlled, I think it`s a good idea overall,” said Nancy Wittendorfer of Seattle. ”Most people don`t ever get to see them otherwise.”
Many people who toured the aquarium Wednesday said they had heard about the deaths before they arrived, but the tragedy had made them even more curious about the animals that are kept there.
”I knew what was going on, but I still wanted to go,” said Jean Lemke of Schaumburg.
Many people took seats in the cool, glass-walled amphitheater, and a few got wet from spray as dolphins leaped dozens of feet into the air or paddled backward on their backs in the indoor pool.
Montana resident Tom O`Dowd, 28, cornered a trainer.
”We were just wondering,” O`Dowd said, ”there are a lot of things in mainstream medicine that people have rejected, and we`re wondering if there might be a more natural treatment for the whales. I personally feel bad about any animal being brought in here.”
The belugas died after receiving injections of ivermectin and levamisole, which are drugs commonly used to kill parasites in many different animals, Ramirez said.
”It`s been proven to be a good drug,” Ramirez told the audience, without referring to the drug by name. ”There is no reason to suspect it is a bad drug. It was a bad drug in this case. . . . Why these two whales reacted the way they did, we don`t know.”
Children watching the dolphin show learned about the tragedy from their parents, and family members some times had differing opinions.
”I`m a little bit sad,” said Avinash Malliah, 9, of Saskatoon, Canada.
His mother, Yusi Malliah, said she likes aquariums and zoos because she views them as places where she can teach her children something new. Her husband, Vishwanath, would rather see animals left in the wild.
”The kids always like these kinds of shows,” he said, ”but I don`t think animals should be in captivity. You can just leave them alone and they`ll be all right.”
Following Tuesday`s deaths, the Humane Society of the United States called for a ban on capturing whales for captivity and animal rights activists held a vigil outside the aquarium Tuesday night.
Betsy Raymond, the aquarium`s public relations and marketing coordinator, said the aquarium has no plans at the moment to capture additional whales.
”Our efforts now are 100 percent into finding out what happened to those animals,” she said. ”We feel that people are concerned and probably have questions about it.”