Beluga whales are highly social, vocal cetaceans that face welfare challenges in both wild and captive settings. Their complex cognitive and social needs make captivity particularly contentious.
Captive belugas suffer from the radical compression of their natural world — unable to make the long migrations, deep dives (up to 700 metres), and complex social interactions that define their wild lives. Concrete pools do not transmit the acoustic environment that belugas depend on for echolocation, communication, and cognitive engagement; instead, man-made sounds echo continuously, potentially causing sensory stress. Stereotypic behaviours, social incompatibility between facility-born and wild-caught individuals, and high mortality in captivity compared to wild survival rates all indicate significant welfare compromise. The continued wild capture of belugas for export to aquariums — particularly from Russian waters — inflicts acute welfare harm through capture stress, transport mortality, and lifetime captivity. The evidence base against cetacean captivity has grown substantially and now encompasses the scientific consensus of most marine mammal researchers.