Every day, Shedd’s animal care and veterinary teams are building a clearer picture of how each beluga is doing. For the resident whales, that picture is informed by familiar health routines built over the years. For the newly arrived rescued whales, who are still getting to know their new environment and the people caring for them, it is built more incrementally, through close observation, patience and timely intervention when needed.
This week, we’re taking a closer look at how those approaches differ, what teams are learning from each whale, and how 24-hour monitoring helps guide their care.
Working Together
Shedd Aquarium has cared for belugas for nearly 40 years. Over that time, we’ve built a veterinary care program grounded in routine, science, and behavior.
Just as a person might calmly provide a blood sample, present an ear for a temperature check, or sit still while a doctor listens to their chest, our teams work with the resident belugas to help them take part in many aspects of their own care. These familiar health behaviors are built over time through regular training and enrichment sessions.
Because of that work, our teams can conduct routine physical examinations, collect blood samples, perform ultrasounds of internal organs, and gather other important health information. Tracking that information over time helps establish what is normal for each animal and allows teams to recognize when a whale may need additional support or treatment.
For the resident whales, these activities are familiar parts of their regular routine. That familiarity gives teams a valuable baseline for understanding each animal’s health.
For the rescued whales, building that same foundation will take time.
Learning Together
For the rescued whales, medical care can look quite different. They are not only adjusting to a new physical space, but also to a new care environment, new routines, and new relationships with the teams supporting them.
When animals come from a different care environment, they may not yet have the same familiar health behaviors as Shedd’s resident whales. That means teams cannot always rely on the same calm, routine opportunities to collect diagnostic samples. But those samples remain important to understanding each whale’s immediate needs, so teams must be flexible, collecting information as needed and, at times, when an opportunity presents itself and with great patience.
Every session with the rescued belugas is also an opportunity to begin building the health and husbandry behaviors that will make routine care easier over time. Some of the whales are already making progress. But, like any new skill, these behaviors take time and consistency to become familiar with.
In the meantime, teams are evaluating each whale as an individual, deciding when to give an animal space to continue settling in and when it is the right moment to step in with additional support.
Secord is one of the rescued whales that teams are watching especially closely this week. Like Osiris last week, Secord has not yet been consistently taking in the amount of food teams would like to see, even as they try different feeding approaches and offer different types of herring to gauge her preference. Teams are also thoughtfully offering Secord access to different habitats, watching closely for signs that she may prefer one setting over another while keeping her routine as consistent as possible.
If Secord cannot take in enough calories and hydration through her regular feeding sessions, the care team may temporarily bring her into a medical habitat to provide supplemental fluids, electrolytes and medication. While the rescued whales are still becoming comfortable with these more hands-on moments of care, that support can be important when an individual animal needs it.
Watching Together
The rescued whale group continues to be monitored around the clock. During each of these shifts, animal care teams document what they are seeing, adding another layer to the picture of how each whale is doing.
This close observation reveals a great deal to our team of experts. Teams track each individual animals’ physiological information, including respiration rates and fecal output. They also watch social behavior: which whales choose to spend time together, how those relationships are evolving, and how the group is using different areas of the habitat.
New observations are added throughout the day to a shared database, allowing the broader team to see patterns as they emerge, hour-by-hour, and day-by-day. That information helps teams get to know each whale as an individual and make the most informed care decisions possible.
Grieving Together
This week also brought difficult news from Spain. We are grieving the loss of Jelly Bean, a rescued beluga in the care of our accredited partners at Oceanogràfic Valencia.
From the outset, teams involved in this rescue understood that many of these whales arrived with complex health needs and that the path ahead would be difficult. The rescue offered urgently needed care and a path forward, but it could not guarantee every outcome. That does not make any loss less painful.
We remain in close contact with teams across the receiving aquariums as they navigate the complex, months-long work of supporting these rescued whales. Together, we continue to share expertise and observations as we learn more about the needs of each animal.