A zoo soap opera: Gay penguins steal nest with eggs from lesbian couple

DutchNews, October 20, 2020 

The would-be fathers. Photo: Dierenpark Amersfoort

A gay penguin couple at Amersfoort’s Dierenpark zoo, who hit the international headlines last year when they stole an egg to hatch, have gone a step further this year by stealing the complete nest of another couple – who happen to be a lesbian duo. 

Last year the same African penguin couple stole an egg from another penguin family, ‘acquiring’ it at a moment when no-one was looking.That egg failed to hatch and the couple remained childless – and are likely to remain so, for now at least. 

The couple are taking in it in turns to sit on the eggs and keep them warm, while the other forages for food. However, the eggs are unlikely to hatch because they have probably not been fertilised, given they were laid by the lesbian couple, says zoo keeper Sander Drost. 

Drost says the would-be fathers are a dominant couple within the 17-strong group in penguin enclosure. ‘Each couple in the enclosure have their own shelter but this couple has commandeered two,’ he told RTV Utrecht earlier this year. 

Penguins breed twice a year and the ousted females will probably build a new nest shortly, the zoo told DutchNews.nl. Homosexuality is fairly common in penguins and there have been various other reports of them fostering chicks.

Gay penguins at Amersfoort zoo steal egg and and try to hatch it

DutchNews, November 14, 2019 

A file photo of African penguins. Photo: Depositphotos.com

A gay penguin couple in Amersfoort’s DierenPark zoo have stolen an egg from another penguin family and are now trying to hatch it, the zoo said on Thursday. 

The two African penguins ‘acquired’ the egg at a moment when no-one was looking, the zoo said. 

No-one knows if the egg they stole has been fertilised, but the hatching season is now in full swing. ‘The gay couple are looking after the egg very well and take turns in keeping it warm,’ zoo keeper Marc Belt said.

‘Homosexuality is fairly common in penguins, but what makes this couple remarkable is that they have gotten hold of an egg.’ 

The couple whose egg was stolen have since produced a new one, Belt said. 

This summer, officials at Berlin zoo gave a gay couple of King penguins an egg to hatch after they tried it earlier with a stone and a dead fish.

Russia releases last belugas from 'whale jail'

Yahoo – AFP, November 10, 2019

Global outcry followed when pictures were published of the whales struggling
 to swim through ice-encrusted waters in cramped enclosures (AFP
Photo/Sergei PETROV)

Moscow (AFP) - The last whales held in a notorious facility dubbed the "whale jail" in Russia's Far East were released on Sunday, the institute overseeing the operation said.

The fate of the whales, which were captured to perform in aquariums, sparked international outrage earlier this year after pictures appeared in the media of them struggling to swim through ice-encrusted waters in cramped enclosures.

Moscow eventually bowed to pressure to release the 93 beluga whales and 11 orcas, which were held for more than a year in the secretive facility in Srednyaya Bay near the far eastern town of Nakhodka.

The whales have since been released in batches, with the last of the orcas freed in August.

The All-Russian Fisheries and Oceanography Institute said the operation to free the last belugas started five days ago.

"In the region of Primorsky Krai, the operation to release the marine mammals into their natural habit has been completed," it said in a statement on Sunday.

Russian NGO Sakhalin Watch, which campaigned for the whales to be freed, said the final 21 belugas were released from two ships on Sunday.

Killer whales are transported to a tank on a truck to be released from the 

"whale jail" earlier this year (AFP Photo/STR)

The organisation said it was delighted that "the release of all the beluga whales has taken place and that the 'whale jail' has finally freed its last prisoners!"

The operation began around 9:00 am (2300 GMT Saturday) and went on until 5:00 pm, Sakhalin Watch said.

Many scientists and activists have criticised the Oceanography Institute for keeping the details of the release secret, not taking any observers on the trip and freeing only a small group of animals at a time rather than all of them together, which would boost their survival odds.

Sakhalin Watch said the coastguard forced its members to leave the bay where the whales were being released.

Russia is the only country that captures wild orcas and belugas to sell to aquariums, a controversial practice made possible by legal loopholes.

Many of the whales held at the facility in Srednyaya Bay were to be sent to aquariums in China.

A Change.org petition for the whales to be released collected more than 1.5 million signatures, including that of Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio.

The animals are being kept at a holding facility in Srednyaya Bay in the Far
Eastern town of Nakhodka (AFP Photo/Sergei PETROV)

Related Articles:

Russia to release killer whales in new habitat, despite expert advice

In Russia, a battle to free nearly 100 captured whales

Dutch home-grown coral colonies shipped off to Germany and Croatia

DutchNews, November 5, 2019 

Photo: Burgers’ Zoo

Over a hundred coral colonies spawned and raised at the Burgers’ Ocean aquarium at Burgers’ Zoo are starting out on a journey on Tuesday to aquariums in Düsseldorf in Germany and Pula in Croatia, the zoo said. 

The Arnhem zoo, which has been exceptionally successful at growing coral in its tanks, has been supplying tropical coral to other European aquariums for a number of years. Burgers’ Ocean boosts the biggest living coral reef in an aquarium in Europe which lives in a tank filled with 750,000 litres of water.

In January this year it shipped over 300 corals, sea anemones and coral reef fish to zoos in England. 

Tuesday’s transports will see 75 coral colonies and three bubble tip anemones travel to Düsselforf and 39 coral colonies and 15 Banggai Cardinal fish to Pula. 

Corals can be divided into two main groups: soft corals without an exoskeleton sand stone corals which are capable of building a stone coral. 

Burger’s Ocean has been so successful at raising both that the coral needs to be ‘pruned’ every once in a while. This makes sure the corals don’t poison their nearest neighbour or simply digest it by enveloping it with its intestine as a reaction to overcrowding.

Russia to release killer whales in new habitat, despite expert advice

Yahoo – AFP, Maria ANTONOVA, May 15, 2019

The animals are being kept at a holding facility in Srednyaya Bay in the Far
Eastern town of Nakhodka (AFP Photo/Sergei PETROV)

Moscow (AFP) - Russia is to free captured killer whales over the next month, but will not return them to their original habitat despite expert advice, a scientist said Wednesday.

The animals will instead be released from their pens in Russia's Far East and may "disrupt vacationers" at resorts nearby, said Vladislav Rozhnov, who was involved in talks over their fate.

Nearly 100 belugas and orcas were captured last summer and kept in small pens by commercial firms who had planned to deliver them to aquariums, including in China where the industry is booming.

Ten killer whales, or orcas, will be released "in late May to early June", Rozhnov said during a briefing at the Russian environment ministry.

He said it would be more ideal to transport them to where they had initially been captured, as Russian and foreign scientists have advised, but this was deemed too costly.

Instead they will be freed in the bay where they have been held near the town of Nakhodka -- more than 1,300 kilometres (800 miles) south from where they were actually caught in the Sea of Okhotsk.

There is a risk that the whales will "stay near the pens where they were fed" and bother humans, he said.

"Science gives recommendations, but the decision is taken by government authorities," said Rozhnov, who heads the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Environment and -- with other agencies -- is part of a council on the fate of the whales.

Last month Greenpeace activists produced an image of an orca in Moscow in 

protest against keeping orcas and beluga whales crammed into small enclosures 

in the Far Eastern town of Nakhodka (AFP Photo/Yuri KADOBNOV)

"We hope that the released animals will go north and return to their native waters," he said.

'Aggressive' orcas

The environment ministry said in a statement that transporting the animals to the Sea of Okhotsk could injure the animals and cause stress. Constructing rehabilitation enclosures at a faraway release site would be too complicated, it added.

"Due to constraints of time, the realisation of this is difficult," the ministry said.

Russian officials last month met with US-based conservationists Jean-Michel Cousteau and Charles Vinick, who visited the facility with the killer whales and 87 beluga whales, also captured last year.

Rozhnov said there was no precise decision on the beluga whales, but that scientists now were looking into genetic evidence of family ties between the captured juveniles and known beluga groups in the wild.

In a statement Wednesday, Cousteau's team warned that releasing the killer whales near the facility where they were being held carried a "high number of significant risks". They included potential conflict with people and boats in the area due to "aggressive behaviours observed in some of the orcas".

Such a release "leads to likely long-term costs and diminished potential for survival", the team said. They said the whales should be taken to where they were captured following an "acclimatisation period" in remote enclosures.

Russia is the only country still catching wild orcas and belugas. The controversial trade of marine mammals has boomed in recent years together with the aquarium industry in China, which uses Russian animals in its new marine parks.

Although some fisheries officials have defended the capture as a legitimate industry, scientists argue it threatens the species' populations.

'Russian' whale leads to espionage speculations in Norway

Yahoo – AFP, Pierre-Henry DESHAYES, May 3, 2019

The origin of the whale remains unknown more than a week after it was first spotted
(AFP Photo/Jorgen REE WIIG)

Oslo (AFP) - A spy, a far away visitor or a fugitive on the run? A mysterious Beluga whale, caught wearing a suspicious harness, has ignited the imaginations of Norwegians who have yet to receive answers.

The whale has been delighting locals in the area of Finnmark in the far north of Norway for the last week.

But more than a week after it was first spotted by fishermen in the Arctic waters off the coast of northern Norway its origin remains unknown.

When Jorgen Ree Wiig, a marine biologist working with the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries tracked down the mammal with the help of a fisherman and two colleagues on April 26, they managed to remove an obviously man-made harness attached to it.

The harness had a mount suited for an action camera and the text "Equipment St. Petersburg" printed on the plastic clasps.

Wiig told AFP on Friday he believed the whale could have come from neighbouring Russia, where he believed it might have escaped an enclosure.

"The whale is so calm around humans and goes up to boats so it seems to have been accustomed to humans," Wiig said.

Hidden agenda?

Another theory supported by Wiig was that the whale could have been trained by the Russian navy as "they have been known to do so before."

Its ease with humans, the markings on the harness together with reports of the Russian Navy training Beluga whales has led many Norwegians to speculate that it could be a "Russian spy."

Moscow has not issued any official reaction but an officer quoted by the media has mocked the idea, arguing that the military would not be stupid enough to "leave their phone number" on an animal trained for clandestine activities.

The Barents Sea is a strategic geopolitical area where Western and Russian submarine movements are monitored.

It is also the gateway to the Northern Route that shortens maritime routes between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Dmitry Glazov, a scientist working at the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Russian news agency Interfax that the Russian Navy had programmes involving whales and that they were in part operating out of Murmansk.

"It is a fact that the military has these animals. Among other things, they used them during the Sochi Olympics," Glazov said Monday.

There are also private travel agents around Murmansk advertising tours that involve meeting or diving with Belugas kept in enclosures in the White Sea south of the Kola peninsula.

AFP has reached out to two of these agents but has been unable to get a response, as it was a public holiday in the country.

The harness itself has been transferred to the Norwegian Police Security Service (PST), but Martin Bernsen, communications officer at PST, said it was unclear whether they would find anything.

"We must admit that examining technical equipment attached to whales is not a daily occurrence for PST," he told AFP.

"The whale is not a suspect in our investigation, for now," he added.

Possible Western connection

Another theory on the origin of the whale is that the "Equipment St. Petersburg," since it's written in English, might refer to the St. Petersburg in the US state of Florida, where there are water parks with Beluga whales, such as Seaworld in Orlando.

According to Jorgen Ree Wiig it wouldn't be inconceivable for the whale to have travelled from there.

"They can swim quite far and especially young males have been known to travel very far," Wiig said.

This hypothesis is supported by videos showing local residents throwing plastic rings in the water which the whale brings back.

Its path would then be reminiscent to that of the famous killer whale Keiko, star of the film "Free Willy" (1993), who once released into the wild outside Iceland swam to the coastal waters of Norway.

No water park has however yet reported the disappearance of a Beluga whale.

Wherever it's from, the whale has become quite the celebrity, and a poll to name it was conducted online by Norwegian broadcaster NRK and gathered 25,000 votes.

Thirty percent of the votes went to the name "Hvaldimir", a pun on the word whale in Norwegian and a nod to its alleged association to Russia.

Beluga whales, which can reach a size of 6 metres and live to between 40 and 60 years of age generally habitate the icy waters around Greenland and northern Norway and Russia.

A sociable species related to dolphins, it travels in pods and the observation of an isolated individual is rare.

French aquarium sued over hammerhead shark deaths

Yahoo –AFP, April 29, 2019

Based in the northern French port town of Boulogne-sur-Mer, Nausicaa bills itself
as the largest public acquarium in Europe (AFP Photo/Ludovic MARIN)

Lille (France) (AFP) - An ocean conservation group said Monday it had filed suit against a French aquarium over the premature deaths of 30 endangered hammerhead sharks.

The move came after the Nausicaa aquarium in the northern French port city of Boulogne-sur-Mer said on Thursday that its last hammerhead, acquired in Australian waters eight years ago, had died from a fungus infection.

It had stopped feeding three weeks earlier and been placed under observation.

The shark died from the same fungus that caused the deaths of 29 other hammerheads at the aquarium since it acquired and began exhibiting them in 2011.

Nausicaa, which bills itself as the largest public aquarium in Europe, said it was still investigating the causes for the early deaths of a shark that scientists say can live 20 to 30 years in the wild.

But the international non-profit group Sea Shepherd on Monday called for an investigation into the techniques used to obtain the sharks and the conditions of their captivity.

"Only greed, coupled with incompetence and flagrant irresponsibility, can explain this slaughter," it said.

The distinctive shark, which can reach four metres in length, is on the Red List of endangered species at the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Nausicaa has defended its collection of the hammerheads, saying it is vital for protecting an animal at high risk of extinction.

"100 million (sharks) are killed each year for their fins," which are a prized delicacy in much of Asia, aquarium director Philippe Vallette said last week.

"If we want to increase our knowledge, we have to be able to observe them 24 hours a day. You can't do that in the ocean," he said.

The claim was dismissed by Sea Shepherd, which called on the authorities to investigate a site that gets millions of euros in public funding.

"If Nausicaa really wants to help protect the hammerhead... the three million euros of public funds spent on this project should have been invested in the fight against poaching," it said.

Death in China zoo puts rarest turtle on cusp of oblivion

Yahoo – AFP, April 15, 2019

Conservationists say there are now only three other known members of the species
left (AFP Photo/STR)

Shanghai (AFP) - The world's rarest turtle has moved a step closer to extinction after a female specimen died in a Chinese zoo, leaving behind just three known members of the species.

The Yangtze giant softshell turtle, believed to be above 90 years of age, died in Suzhou Zoo on Saturday, according to the Suzhou Daily.

The female's death came a day after zoo officials made a last-ditch effort at artificial insemination using semen from the Suzhou Zoo male, an animal estimated to be more than 100 years old, the newspaper said.

The zoo had tried unsuccessfully for several years to get the pair to mate and reproduce naturally. It will now conduct an autopsy to determine what caused the animal's death, the newspaper reported.

Besides the Suzhou Zoo male there are only two other known members of the species left, both living in the wild in Vietnam and of unknown gender, according to conservationists.

The Yangtze giant softshell turtle is the largest freshwater turtle in the world, growing to 100 cm (39 inches) long and weighing up to 100kg (220 pounds).

Its main habitat was the Yangtze River and other inland China waterways.

But aquatic life in China's rivers has suffered severely from centuries of hunting and, more recently, decades of pollution, shipping traffic and ecological disruption wrought by hydroelectric dams.

Rare albino penguin makes debut at Polish zoo

Yahoo – AFP, March 22, 2019

The albino penguin is believed to be the only one of its kind in captivity (AFP
Photo/Maciej KOSYCARZ)

Warsaw (AFP) - A rare three-month-old albino penguin made its first public appearance at a zoo in the Polish Baltic port city of Gdansk, where its keepers claim it is the only one of its kind in captivity.

The all-white African black-foot penguin was born on December 14, but zoo staff decided to keep its arrival secret as they were unsure the vulnerable newborn would survive.

Zoo staff are waiting until they are able to determine its sex to name the youngster.

"As far as we know, there is no other such specimen alive (in captivity) in the world," Michal Targowski, director of the Gdansk Zoo, told the TVN24 commercial news channel.

"The baby is active, in good health, eats well and, what's very important, its parents are taking very good care of it," Targowski said.

To ensure its safety, the youngster is being kept with a small group of six adults, including its parents, part of a group of 70 penguins living at the Gdansk Zoo.

"We're really doting on him so that nothing bad happens to him", Targowski, explaining that other penguins in the troop could take exception to the baby's unique look and harm it.

African black-footed penguins, also known as jackass penguins due to their braying noise, have been rated as endangered since 2010 after suffering from commercial fishing, shortage of prey and pollution.

In Russia, a battle to free nearly 100 captured whales

Yahoo – AFP, Maria ANTONOVA, February 22, 2019

Captured marine mammals seen from above in enclosures at a holding facility  in
Srednyaya Bay in the Far Eastern town of Nakhodka (AFP Photo/Sergei PETROV)

Dozens of orcas and beluga whales captured for sale to oceanariums have brought Russia's murky trade into the spotlight, but efforts to free them have been blocked by government infighting.

Russia is the only country where orcas, or killer whales, and belugas can be caught in the ocean for the purpose of "education". The legal loophole has been used to export them to satisfy demand in China's growing network of ocean theme parks.

Photos of a total of 11 orcas and 87 belugas crammed into small enclosures at a secure facility in the Far Eastern town of Nakhodka sparked a global outcry, and the Kremlin on Friday stepped in, saying the fate of "suffering" animals must be resolved.

"There have never been that many animals caught in one season and kept in one facility before anywhere in the world," said Dmitry Lisitsyn, head of the Sakhalin Environmental Watch group, who has emerged as a point person in the campaign to release the whales captured last summer back into the wild.

Russian investigators launched two probes into poaching and animal cruelty, while Russia's environmental watchdog said it has refused to issue permits to export the whales.

But the investigations and any potential court case could drag on for months.

The Russian government is split between the environment ministry that says the animals must be released, and the fisheries agency that defends their capture as part of a legitimate industry.

President Vladimir Putin has ordered his ministers to "decide on the fate of the whales" by March 1, a decree said Friday.

"The animals are suffering" and may die, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, adding that they "are being kept in conditions that are inadequate for such young animals of these species."

Nearly 100 killer and beluga whales were captured last summer for sale to 

oceanariums, especially the Chinese market (AFP Photo/Sergei PETROV)

200 orcas left

The captured killer whales belong to the rarer seal-eating population of the species, which does not interbreed or interact with fish-eating orcas.

The environment ministry has tried to list the seal-eating type as endangered, ministry representative Olga Krever said.

"This population has only 200 adult animals" in Russian waters, she said.

But the agriculture ministry, which controls the fisheries agency and oversees non-protected sea species, views orcas as competitors for Russia's fish stocks and doesn't believe they are under threat, Krever said, calling the dispute a "big problem."

Marine mammal researchers say there are good chances of a successful release, but the fisheries agency told AFP that it "carries high risks of their mass death".

"Neither orcas nor belugas are endangered," and are simply a resource that can be used according to existing legislation, agency representative Sergei Golovinov said.

Greenpeace activists and supporters rally in Moscow, demanding the release of

the orcas and beluga whales back into the wild (AFP Photo/Alexander NEMENOV)

'Stars of the shows'

Both the United States and Canada stopped catching wild orcas in the 1970s due to negative publicity, so China relies on Russian exports.

There are 74 operational ocean theme parks in mainland China featuring whales and dolphins, according to the China Cetacean Alliance, which monitors the industry. More are under construction.

"Orcas are like the cherry on the cake" for new Chinese venues, said Greenpeace Russia campaigner Oganes Targulyan at a recent protest against whale capture.

"They are the stars of the shows."

All 17 killer whales that Russia has exported since 2013 -- which officials value at up to $6 million each -- have gone to China, according to CITES wildlife trade figures.

Though the animals in Nakhodka are unlikely to get green-lighted for export, their fate is unclear.

The urgency of the situation is clear however: one killer whale went missing from the Nakhodka facility this week, Sakhalin Watch said Thursday, suspecting it may be dead.

Dmitry Lisitsyn (R), head of Sakhalin Environmental Watch, says companies involved

 in capturing whales 'are using their lobbyist muscle' (AFP Photo/Alexander NEMENOV)

In the West, there is widespread opposition to keeping the highly intelligent marine mammals in parks like the US chain Sea World, but in Russia public opinion is not so certain.

Companies that caught the animals are not giving up. At the weekend, they launched a new Instagram account, praising the Nakhodka facility and defending the oceanarium industry.

'Lobbyist muscle'

On Saturday, dozens of pro-industry supporters disrupted a rally to free the whales. They showed up with signs reading "Each orca is 10 jobs" for the crews hired to catch them, and only left when police arrived on the scene.

"We see that the capturing companies are putting up a fight," Lisitsyn said. "They are using their lobbyist muscle."

Researchers meanwhile are already starting to organise to prepare for a potential release of the animals.

"There has never been so many animals released in the past," said Dmitry Glazov, a beluga whale researcher at the Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution in Moscow.

He said a project of that scale would certainly require international expertise and funding. The whales, which have been fed dead fish, would need to go through an adaptation period to make sure they can rely on their natural food sources.

"For science, releasing this many animals would be invaluable," he said. "But there needs to be a decision first."

Forget North Sea fishing – the Dutch export coral to British zoos

DutchNews, January 22, 2019

Photo: Burgers’ Zoo Arnhem

Over 300 corals, sea anemones and coral reef fish spawned and raised at the Burgers’ Ocean aquarium at Burgers’ Zoo in Arnhem are being shipped to England on Wednesday, the zoo announced on Tuesday. 

Burgers’ Zoo, which has been exceptionally successful at growing coral in its tanks, has been supplying tropical coral to other European aquariums for a number of years. 

The London Aquarium is building a special tank to grow a living coral reef. The base of the reef is formed by some 170 stone corals capable of building a sturdy skeleton. Chester Zoo will receive 10 corals and 10 sea anemones from Burgers’ Zoo. 

Burgers’ Ocean boosts the biggest living coral reef in an aquarium in Europe which lives in a tank filled with 750,000 litres of water. Most of the corals shipped to England come from this reef and some were grown separately. 

‘We are happy that our coral reef is growing at such a rate that we have to cut it back from time to time,’ biologist Max Janse said. 

‘Overcrowding is not good for corals, they start to ‘fight’ and influence each other negatively. And it puts us in a position to give coral colonies to our European colleagues and safeguard corals for the future.’

Ray of hope: scientist use contraceptive to curtail ‘highly fertile’ fish

DutchNews, December 17, 2018

An eagle ray. Photo: Steve Jurvetson via Wikimedia Commons.

Researchers at a Dutch zoo have used a contraceptive method to control the breeding habits of a highly fertile species of ray for the first time. 

The breakthrough by biologist Max Janse and vet Henk Luten at Burgers’ Zoo in Arnhem was announced in the Journal of Fish Biology. The pair used an implant to interrupt a female speckled eagle ray’s hormone cycle and stop her reproducing. 

The zoo was involved in a breeding programme for the eagle ray (aetobatus ocellatus) which is a protected species, but after producing 58 offspring since 2009 it had run out of partner zoos who were willing to take the young rays. 

Previous specimens born in Arnhem have been sent to aquaria in Valencia, Tenerife and Denmark, but the scientists said that trying to rehouse the mother was too difficult. ‘You need a lorry to move a ray that size. And in the meantime she kept on reproducing.’ 

The large number of offspring also risked causing other problems in a confined space, wrote the researchers: ‘We found that 21 young originated from one female ray. If all the fish are from the same specimen, they become too genetically similar, which can lead to complications.’ 

The researchers said the long-term effects of the contraceptive implant were unknown. ‘It will probably stop emitting hormones at some point, but we don’t know that for sure. It could also be that the hormonal balance is permanently affected so that the fish can no longer produce young.’

Thomas Cook drops SeaWorld holidays over animal welfare concerns

Yahoo – AFP, July 29, 2018

Thomas Cook will stop selling trips to animal parks which keep captive killer
whales, including SeaWorld in Florida and Loro Parque in Tenerife

British holiday firm Thomas Cook will stop selling trips to animal parks which keep captive killer whales, including SeaWorld in Florida and Loro Parque in Tenerife, their CEO announced Sunday.

"We have actively engaged with a range of animal welfare specialists in the last 18 months, and taken account of the scientific evidence they have provided", Peter Fankhauser wrote in a blog post.

"We have also taken feedback from our customers, more than 90% of whom told us that it was important that their holiday company takes animal welfare seriously," he added, confirming that tickets to such attractions will no longer be sold from next summer.

Animal welfare concerns over the treatment of orcas in captivity have been amplified since the critically lauded 2013 documentary Blackfish, which argued that the highly intelligent animals are psychologically traumatised in tourist attractions such as SeaWorld.

Fankhauser said the decision came after an introduction of a new Thomas Cook animal welfare policy which recognises "that customer expectations were changing when it comes to animal attractions" and "the important role tourism has to play during the transition to ending practices that are known to harm animals."

Animal rights campaigners People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have been campaigning for Thomas Cook to drop the holidays for the past 12 months, with 150 protests around Britain.

"This momentous victory means that Thomas Cook has now become the world-leading travel provider for animal welfare that it had claimed to be," wrote PETA manager of special projects Elisa Allen.

"If other travel providers hope to maintain a shred of credibility with animal-loving British holidaymakers, they must follow its lead," she added.

"There's no humane way to keep these highly intelligent animals in captivity, let alone force them to perform cruel circus-style tricks for food."

In 2016 SeaWorld announced it will stop breeding orcas and no longer keep any in captivity after the current generation dies.

Captive whales find new home as aquarium shows decline

Yahoo – AFP, Robin MILLARD, June 26, 2018

Filer of a captive beluga whale in a Beijing zoo, 10/01/16. Two beluga whales
performing in a Shanghai aquarium are to be flown to a new sanctuary in Iceland
as the popularity of marine shows wanes (AFP Photo/WANG ZHAO)

London (AFP) - Two beluga whales performing in a Shanghai aquarium are to be flown to a new sanctuary in Iceland, giving hope to more than 3,000 captive cetaceans as the popularity of marine shows wanes.

Little White and Little Grey will be taken next year from Changfeng Ocean World to Klettsvik Bay, organisers told a press conference at the Sea Life London Aquarium on Tuesday.

The 12-year-old female cetaceans will still be in human care in the netted-off sea inlet as it is thought they will never survive on their own in the wild.

But the founders said it will give them a better life -- and help research into how captive whales could one day be prepared for release out of human dependency.

British-based Merlin Entertainments operates attractions including Legoland, The Tussauds Group and the Sea Life aquarium.

It took over Changfeng Ocean World in 2012 and started looking for a new environment to house Little White and Little Grey.

Originally from Russian Arctic waters, it is thought they were two or three years old when captured. They weigh around 900 kilogrammes and are around four metres long.

Their 30-hour transfer planned for next year will involve stretchers and transport semi-submerged in tanks, by truck, chartered flight and then ferry.

'Showing the way'

They will be assessed in a care pool before being released into Klettsvik Bay at Heimaey, one of the Westman Islands off the south coast of Iceland.

The bay, which is leased, measures up to 32,000 square metres with a depth of up to 10 metres.

Klettsvik is where Keiko, the killer whale in the 1993 film "Free Willy", was flown in 1998. The orca was fully released in 2002 but did not fully adapt to life in the wild and died 18 months later in a Norwegian fjord.

Beluga whales perform at the Chimelong Ocean Kingdom in Zhuhai, China, 29/04/14. 

Two beluga whales from a Shanghai aquarium are to be flown to a sanctuary in Iceland, 

giving hope to 3,000 captive cetaceans as the popularity of marine shows declines 

(AFP Photo/Mark RALSTON)

"We hope that by showing the way with our sanctuary, we will help to encourage the rehabilitation of more captive whales into natural environments and one day bring an end to whale and dolphin entertainment shows," said Andy Bool, head of the Sea Life Trust charity.

Campaigners have criticised Merlin for continuing the beluga whale shows ahead of the transfer and pointed to the irony of choosing Iceland as a destination since it openly defies an international ban on hunting whales.

The Shanghai whales are being trained to hold their breath for longer, become physically stronger to cope with tides and currents, and are putting on blubber to help them cope with the colder water temperatures.

A third beluga whale at the aquarium, Jun Jun, died from a bleed on the brain in June last year, aged 17.

Belugas typically live for 40 to 60 years.

More than 3,000 whales and dolphins are kept in captivity and it is hoped that up to eight other belugas could join Little White and Little Grey in the future.

"There is a real alternative now for these animals," Bool told AFP.

"The argument has been in the past that you can't just put them back in the sea -- and that's right. But hopefully, people will see what we're doing and want to replicate it."

Cathy Williamson, from the Whale and Dolphin Conservation charity, said public support for aquarium shows was waning.

"The world's first whale sanctuary presents a pathway towards the end of the keeping of whales and dolphins in captivity," she said.