As officials at Vancouver's aquarium probe the facility's second whale death in a little over a year, police say that linking Friday's incident to an early-morning break-in is purely speculative.
Tiqa, a three-year-old beluga, died on Friday after coming down with an illness that had left the young calf with symptoms for the past 10 days.
Aquarium general manager Clint Wright said that Tiqa had not been eating and appeared to have contracted an infection.
"She had been on antibiotics for most of the week," Wright said, noting that the whale's condition quickly deteriorated on Thursday.
Aquarium CEO John Nightingale said that Tiqa is the third young beluga to die at the facility since 2005. He also pledged to find out why the whales are dying.
Though the deaths may be connected, Nightingale said that finding links between the incidents has been difficult.
He added that the aquarium will be sharing details of the death to the public, in the hopes that someone out there may spot something his staff has missed.
"I don't care if it's a dentist in Topeka, Kansas, or a doctor in Hamilton, or a scientist in Japan who spots something we don't, we want their perspective and that information (to try) to help us understand what has happened," Nightingale said.
CTV British Columbia Bureau Chief Sarah Galashan said that the whale died at about 5:45 a.m. local time.
While the break-in occurred at about 4 a.m., police said that it "would be purely speculative" to link the occurrences, Galashan reported.
"They are very careful about saying if there is a connection or not," she said, adding that the intruder had been found inside the enclosure near the tank where Tiqa had been living.
An examination is currently being done on the whale.
Vancouver police Const. Jana McGuinness noted that the person who broke into the tank area did not get into the water.
"We need to let the science come back and the investigation continue to provide those answers," she said.
Six years ago, a three-year-old whale named Tuvaq died at the aquarium, and in June 2010, a one-year-old whale died from what appears to have been an infection. A probe later found that the young calf may have died from ingesting a penny.
In 2001, the aquarium shipped it's only remaining orca to a marine park in the U.S., following the death of a male killer whale that had been living onsite.
