Sea Shepherd Europe asked Lufthansa to review its policy on transport of wild animals and also contacted other major airlines after an incident in early November when two dolphins, one a pregnant female, died in a Lufthansa Cargo machine. They were part of shipment of one Beluga Whale and four dolphins being shipped from Russia to Argentina. Whale and dolphin aquariums cannot exist without the capture and transport industry, as second generation populations bred in captivity are extremely rare.
Owners are very interested in acquiring pregnant animals.
Investigations by Sea Shepherd Brazil and Sea Shepherd Europe found that the five marine mammals were flown to Frankfurt with a Russian cargo plane. There they were reloaded into a Lufthansa aircraft after a veterinarian at the Frankfurt airport certified that the animals were fit for further transport. Most of these animals captured from the wild die in transport. The ones who survive have a pitiful existence in concrete baths. Every visitor to a dolphinarium should be conscious that the animals have gone through hell to get there, and were forcibly separated from their families.