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Team to study belugas' habits

Nine city scientists up on Hudson Bay

By: Alexandra Paul

Posted: 07/9/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

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Chris Debicki ( )

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Beluga whales return each summer to three river estuaries on western Hudson Bay. (KATE STAFFORD PHOTO)

Chris Debicki will be bobbing on the waves today in an inflatable Zodiac boat on Hudson Bay.

As part of a nine-member scientific team from Winnipeg, the Arctic environmental advocate hopes to bump into a beluga or two and tag them in an attempt to explain one of the cyclical wonders of the region.

Ecotourists are drawn every year to witness the multitude at the wild estuaries of the Churchill and Nelson rivers.

The white whales point motionless into the current or across it for hours on end.

Some say the white whales scour away sea lice or other bacteria in a kind of mass exfoliant spa in the churning current and bottom sands.

Problem is, nobody really knows a lot about belugas.

So Oceans North Canada, part of the Pew Environment Group, is teaming with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Manitoba Conservation to begin a three-year study project today, with Inuit support, said Debicki, the Nunavut project director for Oceans North.

During the three years, the expedition will tag belugas at the Seal, Nelson and Churchill estuaries.

The group this year will spend a week at the Seal, selecting and tagging 10 belugas, outfitting each with a tiny transmitter that will feed data to satellite by GPS.

The team expects to find out why the homing instinct is so strong and how the belugas interact with the estuaries -- down to the tidbits they scarf and the moult that's washed away.

"We know it's critical habitat for these whales, but we don't know why, and we need to protect it," Debicki said as he and other crew members finished preparing for the six-day trip.

Federal studies show belugas consistently return to the estuaries, but details remain unknown, such as whether the whales branch off into smaller pods and travel between the estuaries or stick to one place. Answers may explain the extent of the beluga summer range and add to the profile on migration routes.

Armed with the data, the odds are greater that key habitat can be protected, scientists hope.

Debicki said the work is also important to hundreds of Inuit families who rely on a sustainable hunt for beluga, qilalugaq in Inuktitut.

By conserving habitat, vital traditional food sources can be protected, which is why an Inuit hunter from the coastal town of Arviat, Nunavut, is joining the expedition.

Debicki said he hopes to widen public awareness that Manitoba is more than a landlocked province.

"We're trying to awaken Manitobans to the fact that they are also a coastal province," he said.

Last year, Debecki was part of a crew crammed into a crab trawler for another Arctic expedition to track the migration of most of the planet's narwhals through channels of ice between the coasts of Greenland and Nunavut.

He didn't have to say that a week in a Zodiac bobbing with belugas will seem tame by contrast.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca

What the project aims to answer

AN estimated 57,000 beluga whales return to the western reaches of Hudson Bay every summer in one of the biggest migrations of belugas in the world. They head straight for the estuaries of the Seal, Nelson and Churchill rivers. It's thought the belugas share a symbiotic link to these places, where they moult, feed and give birth.

More information is available at arcticwhalestudy.ca .

Oceans North Canada, in co-operation with the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans and Manitoba Conservation, is launching a three-year study to answer basic questions about this homing instinct:

1. How do belugas use the estuaries, and which areas are most important?

2. What routes do belugas travel in the summer between the western Hudson Bay estuaries?

3. How long do belugas spend diving for food as compared to time at the surface?

4. What are the genetic relationships between the western Hudson Bay belugas?

-- source: Oceans North Canada, Pew Environment Group

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 9, 2012 B3

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