More than 100 whales trapped illegally in tiny ‘whale prison’

More than 100 whales have been packed into cramped, tiny and potentially illegal enclosures that have been dubbed a ‘whale jail’.

The ‘prison’ where 11 orca and 90 beluga whales are being held, in a bay near the city of Nakhodka, Russia, is now being investigated by prosecutors.

It is the largest number of sea creatures to ever be held in small temporary enclosures and activisits fear the whales have been caught and are being sold off to Chinese water parks and aquariums.

A worldwide moratorium on commercial whale hunting in 1982 ruled that the animals may only be captured for scientific and educational work.

Local media recently published a video of a crane lifting whales from one tank to another, activists believe to prepare for the whales to be shipped.

Another, shot from above, showed dozens of the whales laying side by side in the small square pools.

Experts who were showed the footage said that the size of some of the animals suggested they must be calves.

The capture of whale calves is categorically forbidden, even for scientific or educational reasons.

According to independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, some of the whales have been in the packed enclosures since July.

The newspaper also reported that the four companies that own the containers exported 13 whales to China between 2013 and 2016.

Between 2012 and 2015, the companies allegedly involved were granted permission to capture ten orcas in the wild for educational purposes.

However, seven of those whales were exported to China, where one was valued at over $1 million (around £773,000) on a customs form, it claimed.

Earlier this year, Russian authorities called on the Interior Ministry to launch a fraud investigation over the capture and sale of the seven whales.

Greenpeace Russia called the conditions the whales are being kept in ‘torture’.

Capturing whales in these numbers threatens the animals’ population in the long term, a spokesman said.

Greenpeace Russia’s Oganes Targulyan told The Telegraph last week that although the law permits the capture of 13 killer whales per year, ‘no one is taking into account that at least one orca is killed for every one that is caught’.

‘Catching them at this tempo, we risk losing our entire orca population,’ he said.

In the nearby Kamchatka region, orca numbers have decreased so drastically that they are now listed as endangered.

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.