Aquarium's killer whale battles serious infection

Bjossa the killer whale, the star attraction at one of Vancouver's tourism crown jewels, is suffering from a potentially life-threatening respiratory illness and has been removed from public display.

The 23-year-old Bjossa, the only killer whale left in captivity at the Vancouver Aquarium, has been battling a bacterial infection for more than a month.

Her condition recently deteriorated to the point where she needed to be moved to an isolation pool and monitored regularly by aquarium staff, who are administering antibiotic medication.

"It's a real serious illness," said Dave Huff, a veterinarian who has treated Bjossa since she arrived at the aquarium in 1980. "But it's very, very difficult to focus in on."

Huff said blood samples taken Wednesday could isolate the problem and indicate whether she has pneumonia.

Officials at the aquarium said they are not concerned about the survivability of the Stanley Park facility if their star attraction dies.

"No matter what happens to Bjossa, this institution is very strong," said John Nightingale, executive director of the aquarium. "I'm not worried about its future."

Nightingale said he has been talking to other aquariums in an effort to find a mate for Bjossa, who has been without an Orca for company since Finna, her male companion, died of pneumonia in 1997. He said the search has been put on hold while staff are tending to Bjossa, but could eventually be resumed.

"Our whole focus is on Bjossa right now," he said. "We're just not thinking about anything else. It's a very serious situation and it's being treated that way."

The aquarium's lease with the Vancouver park board sets out conditions governing whale acquisitions.

It states the aquarium cannot catch any cetaceans, which includes whales and dolphins, from the wild or import into the aquarium a cetacean that was caught after October 1996. The aquarium can bring in whales that were raised in captivity or caught prior to that date.

Bjossa, who was caught off the coast of Iceland, has given birth three times while in captivity, but each time the calves have died. The longest-lived calf survived for only a few weeks.

Peter Hamilton, founder of Lifeforce, an organization with 250 members that advocates the release of whales held in captivity, said he believes Bjossa's containment has negatively affected her health.

"It's about the time with captive killer whales when she would die, since they don't live past about 20 to 25 years in captivity," said Hamilton, who added that the female whales can live for 50 years in the wild.

Larry Dill, a behaviour ecologist at Simon Fraser University, confirmed that killer whales in the wild do tend to live longer than their captive counterparts.

Annelise Sorg of the Vancouver-based Coalition For No Whales In Captivity said: "We were expecting this. Bjossa is an old whale in captivity. This is how most whales in captivity die, because of living in such a confined space with their own sewage."

But Nightingale said the research in this area to date is inconclusive and that because of improved treatment and research, captive whales are living much longer than they did when they were first placed in aquariums.

Bjossa weighs about 2,500 kilograms (5,500 pounds) and is 5.6 metres (just under 19 feet) in length. She is the Vancouver Aquarium's seventh whale -- including her three calves -- since the aquarium began displaying the animals in 1968.

Posted by Annelise Sorg <annelise@direct.ca> Coalition For No Whales In Captivity