Inside the Wild Rescue Mission That Took 4 Beluga Whales to Chicago
Inside the Wild Rescue Mission That Took 4 Beluga Whales to Chicago
深入一场疯狂的救援行动：四头白鲸如何被送往芝加哥
One of the most crucial parts of pulling off an unprecedented international plane ride for four beluga whales is making sure they don’t even realize that they’re on a trip. “The goal is that they notice as little as possible,” says Karisa Tang, the lead veterinarian and vice president of animal health at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium.
在为四头白鲸策划这场史无前例的国际飞行任务时，最关键的一环是确保它们甚至没有意识到自己正在旅行。“我们的目标是让它们尽可能少地察觉到变化，”芝加哥谢德水族馆（Shedd Aquarium）首席兽医兼动物健康副总裁卡丽莎·唐（Karisa Tang）说道。
Tang and Charlie Jacobsma, the Shedd’s director of animal behavior and training, accompanied beluga whales Acadia, Lillooet, Osiris, and Sierra on the journey from their Niagara Falls enclosures to Toronto’s Pearson Airport and to Chicago. Two additional belugas joined the flight on a chartered Boeing 777 freighter but were then transported to an aquarium in San Antonio.
唐与谢德水族馆动物行为与训练主任查理·雅各布斯马（Charlie Jacobsma）一同护送白鲸 Acadia、Lillooet、Osiris 和 Sierra，完成了从尼亚加拉瀑布的围栏到多伦多皮尔逊机场，再到芝加哥的旅程。另有两头白鲸也搭乘了这架波音 777 包机，但随后被转运至圣安东尼奥的一家水族馆。
The whales had been living in Marineland of Niagara Falls, a notorious, long-running aquarium and amusement park that went bankrupt after the death of its owners and closed to the public in 2024. As it ran out of money to care for the animals, the park had previously implored the Canadian government for assistance. In 2025, Marineland announced that it had made the “devastating decision” to consider euthanasia if it could not relocate the animals.
这些白鲸此前一直生活在尼亚加拉瀑布的海洋乐园（Marineland）。这家臭名昭著且经营已久的水族馆兼游乐园在老板去世后破产，并于 2024 年对公众关闭。由于资金耗尽，无法继续照料动物，该乐园曾向加拿大政府寻求援助。2025 年，海洋乐园宣布，如果无法安置这些动物，他们将不得不做出“令人痛心的决定”，考虑对它们实施安乐死。
Workers at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium use a sling to move a beluga whale. Photograph: Reuters 芝加哥谢德水族馆的工作人员使用吊索移动一头白鲸。图片来源：路透社
At that point, the wider aquarium and marine biology world was already discussing what could be done; by January 2026, members of the rescue team were flying to Ontario to assess how they’d transport the belugas. In June, Canada reached an agreement with Marineland to allow this rehoming process, in which animals may go to a consortium of aquariums in Georgia, San Diego, and Spain, in addition to the whales already transferred to Chicago and Texas institutions. It was an unprecedented mission. “People have moved belugas before,” Tang says. “But something of this scale had not been done.”
当时，全球水族馆和海洋生物学界已经在讨论应对方案；到 2026 年 1 月，救援团队成员已飞往安大略省，评估如何转运这些白鲸。6 月，加拿大与海洋乐园达成协议，允许进行此次重新安置。除了已转运至芝加哥和德克萨斯州机构的白鲸外，其余动物将被送往佐治亚州、圣地亚哥和西班牙的多个水族馆联盟。这是一项史无前例的任务。“人们以前也搬运过白鲸，”唐说，“但如此大规模的行动此前从未有过。”
It all went about as smoothly as moving thousand-plus-pound water-dwelling mammals hundreds of miles could have gone: “Beautiful, nice, slow takeoff and a nice easy landing,” Jacobsma tells WIRED. The team was able to stay close to the whales, constantly monitoring them and “pouring water on their backs, making sure that they were comfortable.”
整个过程正如运送数千磅重的海洋哺乳动物跨越数百英里所能达到的最顺利状态：“起飞平稳缓慢，降落轻松舒适，”雅各布斯马告诉《连线》（WIRED）杂志。团队成员能够近距离陪伴白鲸，持续监测它们的状态，并“不断往它们背上浇水，确保它们感到舒适。”
A few days after the transport, on a sunny Friday afternoon, visitors to the Shedd’s Oceanarium section are greeted with signs asking for quiet. “Please keep voices low,” they read. “Help the rescued belugas acclimate to their new home.” WIRED peeked into a secluded habitat, which is under round-the-clock surveillance by veterinarians and other marine life experts, where Acadia, Lillooet, Osiris, and Sierra are currently being kept out of sight of the public so their new stewards can focus on settling them into their new home.
转运几天后的一个阳光明媚的周五下午，前往谢德水族馆海洋馆的游客们看到了要求保持安静的告示牌。“请保持低声细语，”牌子上写道，“帮助获救的白鲸适应新家。”《连线》杂志探访了一个隐蔽的栖息地，那里由兽医和其他海洋生物专家进行 24 小时监控。Acadia、Lillooet、Osiris 和 Sierra 目前被安置在公众视野之外，以便新的照料者能专注于帮助它们安顿下来。
The beluga whales traveled to Chicago by road and air in slings and specially designed, water-filled containers. Photograph: Reuters 白鲸通过公路和航空运输前往芝加哥，途中使用了吊索和特制的注水容器。图片来源：路透社
All female adults in their twenties, the quartet swam through the enclosure displaying the species’ signature slow and graceful dives and twirls. They gave no indication that just about 72 hours beforehand they’d each been hoisted up in a custom stretcher, placed on a truck bed in individual transport boxes filled with cold saltwater, driven to an airport, boarded on a jet, and flown to a city in a new country hundreds of miles from the ocean. To achieve the first leg of this mission, the consortium inventoried “every stretcher, every pole, every resource we had,” Tang says. “It is a logistical marvel.”
这四头白鲸均为二十多岁的成年雌性，它们在围栏中游弋，展现出该物种标志性的缓慢而优雅的潜水与旋转动作。它们丝毫没有表现出就在 72 小时前，它们还被抬上特制的担架，装进装满冷海水的独立运输箱并放置在卡车上，随后被运往机场、登上飞机，并被送往数百英里外另一个国家的城市。为了完成任务的第一阶段，联盟清点了“每一副担架、每一根杆子、我们拥有的每一项资源，”唐说，“这简直是物流史上的奇迹。”
“I can’t emphasize enough how the border crossing makes everything just that much harder,” Tang says. The mission worked with a variety of government agencies, including the Fisheries and Oceans Canada and the United States Department of Agriculture, and adhered to an international treaty governing international animal trade.
“我怎么强调边境过境带来的难度都不为过，”唐说。此次任务与多个政府机构合作，包括加拿大渔业与海洋部以及美国农业部，并严格遵守了管理国际动物贸易的国际条约。
In addition to puzzling over logistics, the team weighed how to separate the animals, and where it would be best to send them, looking at their social groups in Marineland and considering how they’d fit in with resident belugas at other aquariums. (The Shedd already had eight belugas, for example.) The assessments could get pretty granular, agonizing over where to place a juvenile to best allow them to flourish, or which whale might serve as a leader for a newly-established pod. “There’s sub-social groups within groups, right? It’s kind of like how you’ll have a friend group, but then you have one friend that you might be a little bit closer to than another,” Jacobsma says. “We really looked at that level of detail to figure it out.”
除了处理物流难题，团队还权衡了如何拆分这些动物，以及将它们送往何处最为合适。他们研究了它们在海洋乐园时的社交群体，并考虑它们如何融入其他水族馆现有的白鲸群体。（例如，谢德水族馆此前已有八头白鲸。）评估过程非常细致，他们会苦恼于将幼鲸安置在何处最有利于其成长，或者哪头白鲸适合担任新组建群体的领袖。“群体内部还有亚社交群体，对吧？就像你有一个朋友圈，但其中某个朋友可能比其他人更亲近，”雅各布斯马说，“我们确实深入到了这种细节层面来做出决定。”
The Shedd staff were touched by the outpouring of support as they transported the whales. “That goes from the staff up at Marineland to the customs agents at O’Hare that walked onto the plane to check our passports so that we could be with the animals the entire time,” Jacobsma says.
在转运白鲸的过程中，谢德水族馆的工作人员被各界涌现的支持所感动。“从海洋乐园的工作人员，到奥黑尔机场走上飞机检查我们护照的海关人员，他们都给予了支持，让我们能够全程陪伴在动物身边，”雅各布斯马说。
The four beluga whales made it safely to Chicago’s Shedd aquarium. Photograph: Reuters 四头白鲸已安全抵达芝加哥谢德水族馆。图片来源：路透社
That said, the mission has not been without critics, who are calling on more transparency and the end of captive breeding. There were limited options for Marineland’s beluga population; Fisheries and Oceans Canada told Canadian news outlets that the animals could not survive in the wild, and the Shedd says it can provide the highest level of care and that it is not focused on breeding right now. While there is a movement to create more sea pens to retire captive whales, only one exists, in Iceland, and it recently posted on Instagram that it is not in a position to accept more animals. The Whale Sanctuary Project, a Canadian nonprofit, says it is planning to open a sea pen in Nova Scotia in 2027 and has expressed criticism of this effort, calling it a “so-called ‘rescue’ situation.”
话虽如此，这项任务并非没有批评者，他们呼吁提高透明度并终止圈养繁殖。海洋乐园的白鲸种群面临的选择非常有限；加拿大渔业与海洋部告诉加拿大新闻媒体，这些动物无法在野外生存。谢德水族馆则表示，他们能提供最高水平的护理，且目前并不以繁殖为重点。尽管目前有一项旨在建立更多海湾围栏以安置圈养鲸鱼的运动，但目前仅在冰岛存在一个，且该机构最近在 Instagram 上表示，目前无法接收更多动物。加拿大非营利组织“鲸鱼保护区项目”（The Whale Sanctuary Project）表示，计划于 2027 年在新斯科舍省开设一个海湾围栏，并对此次行动表示批评，称其为“所谓的‘救援’行动”。
Jacobsma says the Shedd team is “cautiously optimistic” about how the animals are settling in. They’re exhibiting promising behavior, eating regularly and “foraging” for fish and enrichment toys that the team puts in their habitat. And Tang says this may only be the beginning.
雅各布斯马表示，谢德团队对这些动物的适应情况持“谨慎乐观”态度。它们表现出了良好的行为，进食规律，并会“觅食”团队放置在栖息地中的鱼类和益智玩具。唐则表示，这可能仅仅是一个开始。