The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has approved Mystic Aquarium’s request for a permit to import five beluga whales from a facility in Canada.

The whales will be transported from MarineLand in Niagara Falls, Ontario, for conservation research that Mystic Aquarium hopes will help shape and inform the management and recovery of wild belugas, including endangered and depleted populations. All five were born in captivity, meaning they have a hyper-dependency on humans and without intervention, would not survive, aquarium President and CEO Dr. Stephen M. Coan previously has said.

"We are incredibly grateful to NOAA, National Marine Fisheries and the Marine Mammal Commission for their diligence and commitment throughout the process," he said in a news release Friday announcing the decision.

The new whales will bolster the three currently in the Alaskan Coast exhibit at the aquarium, which typically sees 800,000 visitors a year.

The NOAA application process included a public comment period, a Nov. 18 public hearing — for which the agency received more than 6,500 comments for and against the application, The Associated Press reported — and meetings with stakeholders.

It has not been without controversy.

Ethical questions, state bill raised

Critics have raised ethical questions, arguing that the aquarium uses the sea mammals for entertaining visitors and that the artificial habitat is much smaller than what wild whales are accustomed to. Animal advocates also said moving the whales would put too much stress on them.

“From a stress standpoint, from a welfare standpoint for the whales, I think it just makes more sense to do it there,” said Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist with the Animal Welfare Institute, had told The Associated Press. “The research can be done at MarineLand.” The institute also has accused the aquarium of improperly lobbying federal officials before filing its permit application.

“AWI and other animal organization are considering our options in response to this permit," Rose said in a statement emailed Saturday to The Day, “but we are pleased to see that the permit conditions include, as we requested in our public comments, prohibitions on breeding the whales and training them for performance.”

Mystic Aquarium, which boasts the largest outdoor beluga habitat in the country, has argued that MarineLand has 55 of the whales and faces an overcrowding problem. Studying the whales in captivity is much more feasible than in the wild, aquarium officials have said, though they have conducted some of their research in Alaska and the Arctic.

“This permit is critical to ensure our conservation research continues, is expedited, and that the scientific rigor of our studies increases,” Dr. Tracy Romano, chief scientist at Mystic Aquarium and principal investigator on the permit application, had written in a November guest editorial in The Day.

The aquarium also has faced pressure in the form of a bill in the state legislature.

"An act prohibiting the sale and breeding of certain cetaceans” was introduced early this year by state Rep. David Michel, D-Stamford. He acknowledged in March that the legislation, if passed, eventually would mean the aquarium would not have any belugas in its collection.

“I’m entirely against having marine mammals in captivity,” he said at the time. “They swim hundreds of miles a week or more in the wild and it’s a sad sight to see cetaceans in captivity at all.”

Mystic Aquarium has said the bill would end its beluga research. It rallied supporters to speak against the bill at a legislative hearing in early March.

"I can't help ... but believe that this is a bill that is targeting one business for a philosophical difference in opinion," state Sen. Heather Somers, R-Groton, had said. "... This is the only institution that has cetaceans (in the state), so it is clear this is the Mystic Aquarium Bill, if we are going to be honest."

Dr. Allison Tuttle, the aquarium’s senior vice president of zoological operations, told legislators that scientists use the data collected from whales in captivity, "where we know the background of the animals and where they are all under the same conditions to minimize variability," as a baseline to help them interpret data from wild whales.

Nothing has come of the bill, as there was no spring session due to the coronavirus pandemic.

On Friday, aquarium officials cheered the news of NOAA's approval.

"It's a historic day for Mystic Aquarium," Coan said. "This is part of an international effort that highlights the collaboration and leadership of our work as we strive to make crucial advances in conservation research and species survival."

"It's emotional," Romano said in the release. "The non-invasive research we will be able to do as a result of this permit is pivotal to stemming the tide of extinction for endangered belugas and to ensuring the sustainability of beluga populations in a rapidly changing environment."

"It's been a long time coming from where we started — first characterizing the beluga immune system, then developing important tools to study the impacts of environmental and anthropogenic stressors on the immune system and overall health — and now, the opportunity to apply our work and aid in conservation and sustainability of wild beluga populations is truly what I have been working my entire career toward," she added.