A Beluga Had Pneumonia Antibiotics Couldn’t Cure. Doctors Sent Viruses Down Its Blowhole Instead

A custom nebulizer delivered bacteria-killing viruses directly into Jetta’s lungs.

When antibiotics failed an 11-year-old beluga whale with stubborn pneumonia, her veterinarians reached for something that sounds, at first, counterintuitive: viruses.

Jetta, a beluga at Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut, had developed chronic pneumonia caused by a multidrug-resistant strain of E. coli. Powerful antibiotics had done little to clear the infection. So veterinarians at the aquarium, working with researchers at the University of Florida, selected bacteriophages—viruses that prey specifically on bacteria—capable of attacking the strain infecting her.

But how do you get virus-based medicine deep into the lungs of a whale?

Their answer was a custom nebulizer built for a blowhole.

Caretakers taught Jetta to swim to the edge of her pool three times a day and inhale deeply through the device, breathing in a mist containing the phages. More than a year after treatment, her care team says it has found no evidence that the pneumonia has returned and no apparent adverse effects from the therapy.

The treatment appears to represent the first use of bacteriophage therapy against a bacterial infection in a marine mammal via nebulizer. Given the odd case, it’s no surprise this is a world-first operation. But the case has not yet been described in a peer-reviewed scientific paper, so important clinical details remain unavailable for independent assessment.

Bacteria Busters

Bacteriophages, or simply phages, infect bacteria rather than animal cells. A phage attaches to a susceptible bacterium, inserts its genetic material and turns the cell into a factory for producing more phages. Many eventually burst their bacterial host apart.

That specificity is both their strength and their weakness. A phage capable of killing one bacterial strain may be ineffective against another, meaning researchers often need to find phages closely matched to the pathogen causing an infection.

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For Jetta, that precision provided another option when conventional drugs faltered.

“Whales, dolphins and seals, in the wild and under human care alike, are especially prone to gram-negative bacterial infections, a category of pathogens notoriously difficult to cure with antibiotics,” Molly Martony, senior veterinarian at Mystic Aquarium, told Popular Science.

“That’s the opposite of most land mammals, which more commonly battle gram-positive infections with a wider range of treatment options. As a result, marine mammals face multidrug-resistant infections far more often.”

According to the University of Florida’s Phage Across One Health Symposium page, Martony will present the case at the symposium on Oct. 30, 2026.

A Life Jacket

Phage therapy itself is not new. Scientists have experimented with it in humans for years, particularly against infections that no longer respond reliably to antibiotics. What makes Jetta’s case especially intriguing is how the treatment reached the infection.

“Administering the phages via nebulization, essentially having her breathe them in, proved remarkably effective and stress-free,” Martony explained. “Human researchers have also started to show that it’s a route worth exploring in human medicine, potentially offering a faster, less invasive way to fight multidrug-resistant infections in people.”

Previously, a 2026 review of inhaled bacteriophage therapy identified 31 human studies, including six clinical trials, testing nebulized, aerosolized, or dry-powder phages against lung infections. Most reported clinical or microbiological improvements without major adverse events.

Jetta’s successful treatment does not mean inhaled phages will become standard medicine for whales—much less people. But her case offers an unusual demonstration of what such treatment can look like: a carefully selected virus inhaled through the blowhole of a cooperative whale.

And for Jetta, the treatment was a life jacket.