Orphaned when her mother died the day after Christmas, Kayavak, the Shedd Aquarium’s 7-month-old beluga whale, slowly is gaining weight on her diet of 25 pounds of fish a day.
Now weighing 265 pounds, the baby has learned to swim to the side of the off-viewing medical pool, where she lives alone, to be fed by keepers eight times a day. If her mother, Immiayuk, had not died, the baby still would be getting all her nourishment from nursing and wouldn’t be eating whole fish for at least another year.
“In the last few weeks, Kayavak’s weight has been going up steadily three to five pounds a week,” said Ken Ramirez, the Shedd’s chief marine mammal trainer. “Going by the known range of weights for 6-month-old belugas, 250 to 300 pounds, she is right in that range, though at the low end of it.”
Ramirez said he and other Shedd officials are so encouraged with Kayavak’s progress that during non-public hours they are beginning to let her swim by herself into the other whale pools to become familiar with them. That is a preliminary step for reintroducing her to the four adult belugas in the Shedd collection and, probably sometime in the summer, putting her back on public display.
When Immiayuk was stricken by a bacteria-borne disease and died almost without warning Dec. 26, Kayavak weighed 245 pounds. Though still a nursing baby, Kayavak went on a solid food diet immediately, because keepers thought trying to keep her alive on artificial milk was too risky.
The baby had no experience with eating, so keepers at first had to lower water levels in the pool to hold on to her and put food in her mouth each time she fed. The baby’s weight for the first month after her mother’s death fluctuated, usually hovering at 245 pounds.
When first orphaned, Kayavak had more than 10 keepers looking after her 24 hours a day, to lower the water levels for feeding. Now that the baby has learned to come to trainers at the side of the pool to be fed, she remains under constant observation but with much smaller crews.
“We started by feeding her every three hours,” Ramirez said, “but now we’ve created a quiet time for her from midnight to 6 in the morning when she isn’t fed. We only have one person watching her at that time.”
Kayavak sees and socializes with the whales through mesh gates separating her pool from the others, Ramirez said, but most of her social interaction is with keepers.
“She is interested in the other whales, but after a few minutes of watching them through the gates, she turns and wants the trainers to play with her,” he said.
“We’re in the water so much with her, there’s not much chance for her to be lonely. We’re interacting with her 50 percent of her day. We’re always in scuba or snorkel gear, and we like to sink to the bottom so she can sink with us. On the bottom, she loves to be stroked and to have her tongue scratched.
“She likes to rub up against our wet suits,” he added. “Sometimes we get into an inner tube, and she likes to push us around the pool. Of all the toys we give her to play with, the one she likes the most is a frame of PVC pipes we sink to the bottom with various hard- and soft-bristled brushes attached to it that she likes to dive on and rub against.”
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Introducing her to the other whales is the crucial next step, he said. Two females, Mauyak, who is expecting a calf this summer, and Naya, spent some time sharing a pool with Kayavak and Immiayuk after Kayavak’s birth. A third female, Puiji, and a male, Naluark, so far have not been in the same pool as the baby.
“We might hold off on introducing the baby to Naluark, but we’d like Kayavak swimming and interacting with the females by the time Mauyak gives birth next summer,” Ramirez said.
“If Immiayuk was here, she would be very protective during an introduction, and she’d be teaching Kayavak the niceties of beluga behavior. We will never be able to do as good a job as mom would have done, but we’re encouraged with what is happening. We’ll just proceed very cautiously.”