Beluga dies at Vancouver Aquarium

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – It’s a sad day at the Vancouver Aquarium. Three-year-old Tiqa died early Friday morning, and preliminary results from a necropsy has revealed she had pneumonia.

Clint Wright with the aquarium says Tiqa had been showing signs of illness over the last ten days but was improving, until Friday morning.

“When I got here, I found trainers in the water standing with her. We jumped straight in and had the medical team there. Within 45 minutes she was dead,” he explains.

An hour before she died, aquarium staff had scared off an intruder. The break-in had police and some staff there wondering if it has anything to do with the death of the popular beluga calf. But the VPD does not believe there’s a connection.

VPD Constable Jana McGuinness says nobody knows what the man was doing.

“That’s part of what we’re looking into, just what was happening at that time.  Really he was just standing in the enclosure and got scared off.  There’s not much more to it than that.”

McGuinness adds, “We’re collecting any evidence of where the person might have got into the enclosure and how long they were there, and looking for any sort of clues or evidence that might have been left behind as to why he was in side.”

There have been no threats made and there’s nothing to suggest the tank water was in any way compromised.

Visitors at the aquarium are saddened to hear the news. “We were wondering where she was.  That’s really too bad,” says one woman.  Another says, “We heard the news just as we were parking the car.  With our kids and all the fuss here today, we didn’t know what to tell them.”

Tiqa’s death is the third among the aquarium’s beluga calves over the last 10 years. Last June, a one-year-old calf died at the aquarium from an apparent infection. An exam later found two stones and a penny had been lodged in Nala’s larynx.

“Some of these staff spend more time at the aquarium than they do at home with their kids.  The relationships aren’t taken lightly at all.  There are a number of sad, unhappy, and distraught staff and volunteers around the aquarium today,” says the aquarium’s Dr. John Nightingale.

Environmental groups react

Peter Hamilton with the ecological group ‘Lifeforce‘ says the news doesn’t come as big surprise to him:

“We went  through this debate with the issue of keeping orcas at the Vancouver Aquarium, and the aquarium insisted the lifespans are the same in captivity as in the wild. But scientific research has proven this to not be the case.”