‘Torture’ of Russian ‘whale jail’ as 100 Orcas and Belugas captured in Pacific bay

Prosecutors are investigating whether more than 100 whales crowded into tiny enclosures on Russia’s Pacific Coast are being held illegally.

Eleven Orca and 90 Beluga whales are being held in what local media have dubbed a “whale prison” in a bay near the city of Nakhodka.

It is the largest number of sea creatures to ever be held in small temporary enclosures, independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported. Some of them have been there since July.

Activists also allege that the whales are being sold to Chinese aquariums, despite the fact that the animals may only be captured for scientific and educational work following a worldwide moratorium on commercial whale hunting in 1982. 

On Monday, local media published a video of a crane lifting a whale into a tank on shore, reporting that the animals were being prepared for transport to an unknown destination.

The four companies that are renting the enclosures exported 13 Orcas to China between 2013 and 2016, according to a Novaya Gazeta investigation.

They reportedly received permission to catch 13 Orcas this year. But the Vladivostok conservation prosecutor is checking these documents and looking into whether the Orca and Beluga whales were actually captured for scientific or educational purposes. 

It is also appraising as the conditions of their confinement and legality of the structures holding them.

An Orca whale can reportedly fetch more than $6 million in the booming ocean theme park industry in neighbouring China. There are more than 60 marine parks in China, and at least a dozen more are under construction.  

Mistreatment of Whales in Nakhodka, Russia

In July, the prosecutor general’s office asked the interior ministry to open a fraud case against four unnamed companies, which had obtained permission to capture ten Orcas for educational purposes in 2012-15 but sold seven of the creatures abroad.

One of the whales was valued at more than $1 million on a customs form.

Firms have also reportedly “rented” whales out to get around the prohibition on selling them. Russia is believed to be the only country that exports Orcas captured in the wild. 

“Catching them at this tempo, we risk losing our entire Orca population,” said Greenpeace Russia research coordinator Oganes Targulyan. “The capture quota now is 13 animals a year, but no one is taking into account that at least one Orca is killed for every one that is caught.”

Many of the whales in the bay near Nakhodka must be infants to fit in the enclosures in such numbers, experts have said, even though the capture of whale calves is categorically forbidden.

Also known as “killer whales” even though they are in fact the world’s largest species of dolphin, Orcas are highly intelligent creatures that live in large families and communicate through a set range of sounds.

Greenpeace said it was “torture” to keep Orcas in enclosures like those near Nakhodka.

The “whale prison” has been fenced off and closely guarded from outsiders. When animal rights activist Nina Zyryanova tried to take photographs of it on Saturday, security personnel grabbed her camera and stole the memory card from it, she complained to police.

This year, the nearby Kamchatka region declared Orca whales who feed on marine mammals like seals an endangered species, which should offer this population further protection from capture.