After the death of the seventh beluga whale, what issues are worth pondering deeply?
On 9/30, the beluga whale Blue at the aquarium died of "subacute septicemia," making it the seventh beluga whale to die since the aquarium first introduced beluga whales in the 91st year of the Republic of China. Now only three beluga whales remain in the pool, two males and one female. The aquarium only hastily convened this "Beluga Whale Captivity Status Review Meeting" after animal protection groups issued an emergency statement and Legislator Lin Shu-fen questioned Education Minister Wu Se-hwa at the Education Committee and proposed five improvement measures.
Absurdly, the list of groups invited to attend the meeting seemed designed only to pay lip service to one of the five demands raised by the legislator, namely to "immediately require the aquarium, Haijing Company, animal protection groups, experts and scholars, veterinarians and relevant units to convene a meeting to 'evaluate, review and improve the environmental enrichment of beluga whale captivity.'" The units invited by official letter to participate in the meeting were: the Forestry Bureau of the Council of Agriculture, Executive Yuan; the Legislative Yuan ( Legislator Lin Shu-fen); the Taipei City Bliss and Wisdom Buddhist Foundation; the Ci-Xin Organic Agriculture Development Foundation; the Academia Sinica (Chen Chao-lun, research fellow at the Biodiversity Research Center); the Marine Biology and Cetacean Research Center of National Cheng Kung University; National Pingtung University of Science and Technology; Farglory Ocean Park; and Haijing World Co., Ltd.
On this invitation list, the Forestry Bureau of the Council of Agriculture is the competent authority for marine mammals, Legislator Lin Shu-fen of the Legislative Yuan is the person who raised the questions, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology is the long-term partner of the aquarium for biological necropsy and medical testing, and Academia Sinica and the Cheng Kung University Cetacean Research Center play academic roles. Yet the two "animal protection groups" invited to represent this issue were actually the Bliss and Wisdom Buddhist Foundation and the Ci-Xin Organic Agriculture Development Foundation. Meanwhile, the "animal protection groups" that had continuously followed, tracked the beluga whales' movements and held press conferences to publicly state their positions since the second introduction of the beluga whales, namely the Environment & Animal Society of Taiwan and the Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation, were completely avoided on this official letter. If not for being informed through the legislator, the Kuroshio foundation and the animal society would not have attended uninvited. Could it be that the aquarium really just wanted to go through the motions, give a perfunctory report and be done with it? Such an attitude makes one seriously question whether there is any sincerity to solve the problem.
If things are not laid open honestly, the meeting cannot proceed. Although in the end the aquarium still showed the proper grace and prepared seats for attendees from both meetings, once on site, Chen Yu-min, director of the Environment & Animal Society of Taiwan, immediately asked the aquarium point-blank on what basis the official invitation list had been sent. The aquarium was evasive, using the excuse that "the matter arose suddenly and too many people needed to be invited, so some were omitted," sidestepping the issue by dwelling on the trivial. Soon afterward, this "closed-door meeting" began under a notice prohibiting video recording.
At the start, Liu Wei-chung, a senior beluga whale keeper at Haijing Company, reported on the size of the beluga whale rearing pool and water body, medical testing items, and tests of water quality, water temperature and other items. After a fifteen-minute briefing, attendees were then taken to visit the beluga whale rearing pool in the back area. Besides requiring attendees to put on isolation gowns, any form of recording was strictly prohibited. Haijing Company's explanation was that trade secrets were involved, so filming had been banned since the aquarium opened.
The pools currently used to keep beluga whales in the aquarium are divided into four small pools (2 medical pools, diameter 5m x water depth 2m, diameter 8m x water depth 3.5m; 2 preparation pools, diameter 8m x water depth 3.5m) and one large pool (1 display pool, 43m x13m x7m), which is also the place where beluga whale performances used to be held, with a transparent underwater tunnel buried below for visitors to view. According to the aquarium, this pool size meets the animal welfare regulatory standards of the United States Department of Agriculture. However, after seeing it, Professor Wang Jian-ping, who attended, said: keeping beluga whales in pools like these is almost out of all proportion to their body length, and it is even smaller than the recovery pool at the Sicao Cetacean Rescue Center!
In fact, even keeping only the three surviving whales now feels cramped, so how could one imagine that eight beluga whales were once kept in there? (Of the earliest beluga whales transported in, two died not long after being brought to the aquarium, and the death report cited stress during transport.) The original scale of this pool set up by the park was intended to raise bottlenose dolphins. Later, because domestic groups were repeatedly blocked, beluga whales were introduced from Russia instead. But at the time the aquarium only made requirements regarding the water temperature for keeping beluga whales, and whether the size of the rearing space matched the beluga whales' body size was not further examined.
Chu Tseng-hung, chief executive of the Environment & Animal Society of Taiwan, pointed out directly that in this animal death review meeting, only the animals' life-support values were given, but the data analysis of the long-term effects leading to the animals' deaths had not been produced. In addition to tests of water quality and pathogenic bacteria, research on noise still needs strengthening. He also asked the aquarium to publish detailed information on water quality monitoring and to provide review reports on enrichment at aquariums worldwide, so as to strengthen the aquarium's enrichment measures, and further demanded that the aquarium produce a comprehensive enrichment plan.
As for the beluga whale Blue, which died on 9/30, the necropsy report is not yet available. Professor Liao of National Pingtung University of Science and Technology briefly explained the current preliminary findings, mentioning that the indices of resident bacteria such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Vibrio parahaemolyticus originally present in the water had not increased, but because the animal's immune system was dysregulated, its lungs became infected and acute septicemia caused death. Gan Chiu-su, an interpreter at the Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation who once served as a dolphin veterinary inspector at Farglory Ocean Park, asked: Did beluga whale Blue show any signs before death? If monthly blood test data were all collected according to the report, then how could no abnormality in the animal have been found? How would Haijing Company subsequently plan the animals' disease prevention measures? Li Tsung-hsien, a veterinarian at Haijing Company, answered on site that the animal had shown no abnormality before death and died suddenly. As for how to strengthen disease prevention measures for the remaining three beluga whales and further plan to reduce infection in the future, there was still no clear response.
Based on the answers put on the table, human negligence, and review of the rearing site's water quality or water temperature, were all cleverly excluded, and the cause of death was attributed to a problem with the animals' immune systems. Chen Chao-lun, a research fellow at Academia Sinica, also asked on site whether the analysis during testing and necropsy had targeted terrestrial-source bacteria, to further clarify the source of the bacteria. But the testing unit at Pingtung University of Science and Technology explained that it was hard to say whether the bacteria were terrestrial in origin, so this part of the analysis had never been done.
After listening through one round, such explanations made one shake one's head, because the aquarium only presented procedures that appeared to be entirely "in compliance with standards," while showing no room for wanting to "improve" or "review." From the explanations of the aquarium and Haijing Company, it can be understood that regarding the beluga whales' medical treatment methods, quality-of-life status, how to avoid infection, how to handle animals under stress, methods of environmental enrichment, and animal behavior observation, all of these changes were begun only starting this year. And isolating the beluga whales from humans was also a measure carried out only after Blue's death on September 30 in order to "strengthen quarantine." It has now been 12 years since the beluga whales were imported, and for so many years these basic health indicator data had never been completely established, nor had long-term data on animal behavior observation been established, making analysis impossible. No wonder the animal mortality rate is so high.
Chang Hui-chun, chief executive of the Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation, noted that the aquarium had introduced beluga whales in the name of research back then, yet the "research reports" produced so far have been pitifully few. Researchers within the aquarium's establishment have also not produced papers related to beluga whales. In twelve years, there have been only a few analysis reports on blood and pathology, while reports on the effects of noise and sound frequency on beluga whales and the various responses of beluga whales to environmental enrichment are completely absent, making it truly difficult to meet the standard of "research." In response, acting director Chen Chi-hsiang said that he himself is also a researcher, that establishing and analyzing basic animal data is indeed important, but unfortunately the aquarium lacks professional talent to conduct research in this area, and that it would work in this direction in the future.
At the same time, the Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation also questioned the aquarium's transparency regarding beluga whale information. Originally, the aquarium's website once had live streaming of beluga whale images and related information about the beluga whale introduction, but now there is none at all, making it difficult for people concerned about beluga whale issues to follow up. Researcher Meng Pei-chieh of the aquarium explained that the equipment setup and system were already old and out of repair, and there was no funding to install them again.
In addition, regarding the aquarium's continued inclusion of a touch pool in its display activities, the two groups, the animal society and the Kuroshio foundation, sharply questioned what educational significance such an arrangement actually had and when the aquarium would be willing to stop it. Facing the questioning, Haijing Company manager Chiu Hsin-han answered honestly that he believed the touch experience was necessary and did not consider canceling it. But animal protection groups believe the touch pool arrangement does not achieve the educational value claimed by Haijing Company, but is instead a commercial mode of operation, and they will continue to monitor whether the aquarium improves in the future.
Finally, the Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation and the Environment & Animal Society of Taiwan strongly fought for transparency in the aquarium's animal rearing information. In addition to demanding that information on animal imports and exports should be published, breeding plans and animal death necropsy reports should also be announced. In addition, they hoped the aquarium could allow NGOs and animal protection groups to participate jointly. Chen Yu-min, director of the Environment & Animal Society of Taiwan, further provided examples of cooperation between public departments and animal protection groups in laboratory animal issues. A technical specialist from the Forestry Bureau of the Council of Agriculture also suggested that the aquarium release an initial gesture of goodwill and expand the targets of cooperation; besides cooperation with Pingtung University of Science and Technology on medical testing, it could also establish a platform with experts and scholars from various fields and even school departments to cooperate on observational research into animal behavior.
The entire review meeting lasted about three hours. Besides the report on the aquarium's current biological situation, the most important purpose of this meeting should have been to promote dialogue between animal protection groups and the aquarium. In fact, animal protection groups are not opposing merely for the sake of opposing; more importantly, they hope to urge the aquarium to strengthen proper care for the remaining beluga whales. They hope that the observations and research not done in the past can be carried out during the animals' remaining years, so that it is no longer just false advertising, kidnapping animals in the name of research to attract visitors to come and spend money, while lacking the ability to care for or study them, ultimately causing them to die one by one in the pool.
In this meeting, the Kuroshio Ocean Education Foundation and the Environment & Animal Society of Taiwan also provided the case materials and suggestions they had on hand regarding environmental enrichment for captive animals. The ultimate goal is to hope the aquarium will be willing to adopt the suggestions of animal protection groups, make animal information public and transparent, and let relevant professional researchers truly participate in research without the animals being disturbed, no longer using "trade secrets" as an excuse to carry out secret black-box operations away from the light of day.
It is hoped that the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium can show the vision and original purpose of a national research institution. Starting from the death of the seventh beluga whale, it should at least show the sincerity to mend the fold after a sheep is lost!