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Covid and conservation – how we protected whales and dolphins together in 2020

Belugas take little steps to new life in sanctuary home

Our project with the SEA LIFE Trust to move two beluga whales, Little White and Little Grey,  from captivity in China to the world’s first whale sanctuary in Iceland has taken some significant  steps forward. We’re calling this phase ‘Little Steps’, because that’s what we and the whales are taking. The whales made good progress…

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Why do female orcas live so long after they stop having babies?

Orcas are one of only five species known to experience menopause and females can live for many decades after their last calf.  The only other mammals reported to exhibit this unusual life history strategy are short-finned pilot whales, belugas, narwhals and humans. The question of why females of any species should stop reproduction before the…

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How we’re helping to keep orcas safe from capture in Russia

In 1999, we helped open up whale research in Russia, building a photo-ID catalogue of orcas as well as a Russian team to study them. We called this the Far East Russia Orca Project, or FEROP, and it’s still going strong today. FEROP has trained a generation of young students in photo-ID, acoustic recording and…

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US aquarium wants to import belugas from Canada

Mystic Aquarium, in the US state of Connecticut, has applied to import five young beluga whales from Marineland in Canada for research, claiming they cannot study the whales without moving them. Canada banned whale and dolphin captivity earlier this year but we’re facing a battle to make sure this law is upheld. Two attractions in Canada…

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Bringing home the misery of orca captivity

Emma Stallworthy and Caroline Willis spent much of 2019 as residential volunteers at our Scottish Dolphin Centre. Part of their role was to run the centre’s events programme and in this guest blog, they explain how they came up with an event to help visitors understand the cruel confinement of captivity. Volunteering at Whale and…

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