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Marine Connection welcomed the recent decision by the Government of the Russian Federation Russian to formally add the country’s transient killer whales that frequent the Kamchatka region to the Russian Red Book of Endangered Species.
This action would give these marine mammals greater protection from the many threats they face, including being removed from the wild for the public display industry, however worryingly this may not be the case.
As a charity that has long campaigned against this cruel practice, we have learned that the Pacific branch of VNIRO (Russian Scientific Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography) is holding a public hearing on April 17, 2020, to discuss possible future captures of four killer whales and 10 belugas for scientific research in 2021. Two of the orcas would be caught off within the Kamchatka peninsula which occupies 370,000 square kilometres and although only reachable by plane, boat, or helicopter, with the cost of a live killer whale, fetching a minimum, $1 million, this price tag gives captors more than enough incentive to travel to the region.
Documents provided do not state which method of capture will be used on the killer/beluga whales, what research is planned to be undertaken, which facility the whales will be held at or for how long. There is also no mention of them ever being released back into the wild, therefore these whales could ultimately be shipped to China for display and we need your help to ensure permits are not authorised and these plans are not allowed to go ahead, the details are simply not transparent.
In the summer of 2018, four companies caught almost 100 beluga whales and orcas over the course of several months, under the guise of scientific and educational purposes – in truth the animals were destined to be sold to various marine parks for public display and despite global outrage, the whales were held in cramped holding pens in Srednyaya Bay, in Russia’s far east, for over a year before eventually being released back to the wild. All four companies were fined for the illegal captures – but we cannot allow this to happen again.
For every whale captured, many more may die through stress and net entanglement!
ACTION ALERT
Please support our appeal by emailing VNIRO/TNIRO requesting that no killer whales or belugas whales be captured in 2021.
