The fate of 30 captive beluga whales and four dolphins hangs in the balance as Marineland in Niagara Falls awaits final approval for an export permit from the Canadian government. Marineland has threatened to euthanize the whales, as they can no longer afford to feed and house them since shuttering the park.Marineland closed to the public in 2024 after years of declining ticket sales. An initial attempt to sell the whales to an amusement park in China was blocked by Canada’s Fisheries Minister, Joanne Thompson, in order to protect the whales from performing in captivity. A more humane solution for many is The Whale Sanctuary Project, a 100-acre enclosed parcel of coastal waters in Nova Scotia. The sanctuary is not yet complete, however, and Marineland is pressing the federal government to allow them to export their whales to amusement parks in the United States. Read more: Marineland’s decline raises questions about the future of zoo tourism My research examines how environmental politics get transformed into Hollywood movies. Captive whales and dolphins inspired the Save the Whales movement of the 1970s and 80s, which found itself expressed in films like The Day of the Dolphin and Orca. While these films were very sympathetic towards whales, their star cetaceans were captive orcas and dolphins.The crisis at Marineland is emblematic of human-cetacean relations in the last hundred years. Whether capturing them on film, containing them in amusement parks or subjecting them to scientific experiments, our curiosity about whales and dolphins has compelled us to fetch them out of the ocean. The irony is that, once we have gotten a good look, we recognize their right to be free in an environment they are no longer equipped for.Free WillyThe best example of this irony comes from the 1993 film Free Willy. In it, a young boy befriends, and then leads to freedom, a captive orca named Willy. A surprise hit at the box office, once the film was released many audience members wanted to know whether the whale who played Willy had also been set free. Keiko, as that whale was known, was held in captivity in an under-resourced aquarium in Mexico City at the time. Like the belugas and dolphins at Marineland, Keiko was suffering some of the mental and physical afflictions associated with living in a poorly maintained tank. Since 2019, 19 belugas, one dolphin and one orca have died at Marineland.Pressure from fans of the film led to the creation of the Free Willy-Keiko Foundation, and a plan to release Keiko back into the wild was developed. Unfortunately for Keiko, and captive whales everywhere, once a cetacean has spent a significant amount of time in captivity, they are rarely able to survive reintroduction to the wild. Millions of dollars were spent flying Keiko, first to Oregon, where he was taught to catch and eat live fish again, and then to Iceland where he was slowly introduced to a wild pod of orcas. Keiko died of pneumonia in a Norwegian fjord only 18 months after his full release.Keiko’s story highlights the problem faced by the belugas and dolphins at Marineland. Films and amusement parks expose millions of people to the intelligence, charisma and ineffability of cetaceans. This exposure transformed toothed-whales in the popular imagination from “wolves of the sea” to a “mind in the waters.” What were once thought of as dangerous gluttons who decimated commercial fish stocks became intelligent and benevolent friends. Once this transformation has taken place in the popular imagination, the captive whales that inspired it are no longer congruent with the dominant opinion that intelligent and social creatures should not be taken from their families and held in small tanks.What do the whales want?The belugas and dolphins at Marineland are, from one perspective, victims of a law designed to protect them. Bill S-203, nicknamed the “Free Willy bill,” banned keeping captive whales and dolphins in Canada after passing into law in 2019. The whales at Marineland were grandfathered in, but further breeding was prohibited. The ban on breeding means Marineland has to keep the male and female belugas separate from each other. According to one former trainer at the park, once the males were secluded from their female companions, they began aggressively raking each other with their teeth, leaving scars visible on their skin. Read more: The fate of Marineland’s belugas expose the ethical cracks in Canadian animal law In 2021, Ontario’s Animal Welfare Service concluded an investigation into the park, declaring that all the marine mammals there were in distress due to poor water quality. Marineland has made efforts to improve the life-support systems since 2021, and the whale deaths at the park have not been linked to water quality. That being said, even when cetaceans are well cared for in captivity, they live shorter lives than their wild counterparts.An ideal plan for the whales at Marineland would be made in consultation with them. Unfortunately, despite many imaginative attempts (some of which I detail in my forthcoming book), an interspecies communication breakthrough with cetaceans has yet to occur.In the 1986 film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home the crew of the Starship Enterprise is tasked with travelling back in time to collect a pair of captive humpback whales, as cetaceans are extinct in their present. Before beaming the animals up, however, Spock takes a swim with them to ask their permission. When Captain Kirk asks why he jumped into the whale tank, Spock replies:“Admiral, If we were to assume that these whales are ours to do with as we please, we would be as guilty as those who caused their extinction.”Matthew I. Thompson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.