10/10/2026
Another heartbreaking loss. 💔🐋
Caspian, a 27-year-old female beluga rescued from Marineland in Niagara Falls, Ont., has died at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium. She had been eating less for weeks, and when her condition collapsed on Wednesday, staff kept her on life support for nearly four hours, but she couldn’t be saved.
She is the fourth former Marineland beluga to die at Shedd since the whales arrived this summer. Peekachu (23), Osiris (26) and Rain (20) died in late August and September. Shedd also lost Beethoven, a 34-year-old beluga who had lived there for years. In Spain, another rescued Marineland beluga, Jelly Bean, died at Oceanogràfic Valencia. That means six belugas have died, five of them from Marineland.
Shedd says the rescued whales were “made vulnerable by chronic and severe illness.” Early necropsy findings showed long-term problems such as gut disease, liver damage and lung scarring. Six of the 10 belugas Shedd took in are still alive and are eating full diets while staff watch them closely. (Sources: WTTW News, Chicago Sun-Times, FOX 32 Chicago, Oct. 9.)
They finally left the tanks they grew up in, but for many, it came too late.
