Whales freed from Russian ‘jail’ given massages, special balm and police escort

Two killer whales and six beluga whales back in wild after being held in cramped enclosures by firms planning to deliver them to aquariums

Release operation criticised by scientists and activists over secrecy, lack of observers, and choice to free only small group instead of all the animals at once

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VNIRO specialists releasing a beluga whale in the Sea of Okhotsk on Cape Perovsky in the Khabarovsk region, Russia, in June 2017. Photo: VNIRO via EPA-EFE

Published: 6:16am, 5 Jul 2019Updated: 6:16am, 5 Jul 2019

Whales were massaged and lathered in special balm as they rode toward the ocean in a motorcade as part of their release from a “jail” in the Russian far east, the institute overseeing the operation said on Thursday.

Two killer whales and six beluga whales were freed last week after months of captivity and a public backlash that eventually saw Russian President Vladimir Putin endorse their release.

An aerial photo taken in January shows captured marine mammals at a holding facility in Srednyaya Bay in Nakhodka. Photo: AFP

The animals have been held in cramped enclosures since last summer by commercial firms that planned to deliver them to aquariums, including in China, where the industry is booming.

A further 87 are currently still in the facility nicknamed “whale jail”.

“The hardest thing in the release was that nobody has done this before,” said the director of the All-Russian Fisheries and Oceanography Institute (VNIRO), Kirill Kolonchin.