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player ready...The two most recent additions to Chicago`s whale population made their official public bows somewhat reluctantly Friday morning at the Shedd Aquarium`s marine mammal oceanarium.
The juvenile beluga whales, a male and a female captured in the Churchill River in northern Manitoba last August, at first were ”no-shows” Friday morning. The pair was supposed to show up at 10 a.m. in one of the
oceanarium`s public pools so that assembled newspaper photographers and television crews could, for the first time, capture them on film.
A half an hour into the scheduled debut, however, neither whale had shown face or fluke, preferring to remain in the small, off-viewing medical pool where they have spent their first three months in Chicago.
”They probably are a little scared of the extra noise and commotion,”
Jim Robinett, Shedd`s curator of marine mammals, explained to frustrated cameramen and reporters. Eventually, however, the two animals ventured through an open gate from the 35,000-gallon medical pool and into a 200,000-gallon public pool for a brief excursion in the media limelight.
”In time they`ll investigate this pool thoroughly and decide it`s OK,”
Robinett said. ”Next we`ll move them to the 400,000-gallon pool, and finally to the 2-million-gallon pool.”
Once the two whales feel comfortable with all the facilities in the oceanarium, Robinett said they will be allowed to share a pool with two female beluga`s living in the oceanarium since its opening two years ago.
Hopes for a successful beluga breeding program at the Shedd now rest with the male newcomer introduced yesterday. He and his poolmate, both still unnamed and known simply as Number 7 and Number 9, were captured last summer along with two other juvenile belugas, also a male and female.
The other two whales, however, died suddenly in September, apparently from an adverse reaction to an anti-parasite medicine injected into them 20 minutes eariler.