Story thread · 2 reports / 2 sources

When Shedd Aquarium’s first beluga whales came to Chicago

wbez.org · 4dShare

The two beluga whales lay in the belly of the cargo plane, everyone on board eager for the final leg of a journey that had begun a year and a half earlier in a pristine river splashing into Canada’s Hudson Bay. No. 1 and No. 3, as the two female belugas were then known, were to be the star attractions at Shedd Aquarium’s new $43 million Abbott Oceanarium. As crews got the world’s then-largest indoor marine mammal pavilion ready, the whales sojourned at Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington. As the jet prepared to taxi down a snowy runway at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport in early March 1991, an unattended truck, accidentally left in drive, slammed into the underside of one of the wings, damaging the plane and leaving humans and cetaceans alike stranded until repairs could be completed 14 hours later. When the plane finally took off a day late, the pilot climbed too steeply, jolting the tanks holding the belugas. “It was quite a wave,” said David Casper, then a Shedd

First report: When Shedd Aquarium’s first beluga whales came to Chicago — suntimes.com, 4d