‘VAGRANT’ BELUGA HAS FLED AGAIN.
WHALE RESCUED LAST YEAR RETURNS TO MARITIMES
Last summer, an unprecedented rescue airlift was launched after a beluga whale in failing health was spotted swimming up a New Brunswick river, far from its home in Quebec’s St. Lawrence estuary.
Conservationists, hopeful the young male could contribute to the recovery of the endangered population, celebrated when the animal was released back into the waters off Tadoussac, Que., to join a group of belugas.
Its whereabouts and wellbeing became a mystery when a satellite transmitter attached to its back fell off three weeks after its release, but now the mystery has been solved.
The good news is that it appears to be in robust health; the bad news is it has returned to the Maritimes, this time to a channel off the Cape Breton coast, and it has brought along a friend.
“We’re a bit puzzled,” said Robert Michaud, scientific director of the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals, which was part of last year’s rescue effort.
“We’re not very happy about it because he is putting his life at risk again, and we wish we were telling the world, ‘Okay, he made it. He’s here. He’s playing with his buddies in front of Tadoussac.’ But he might still come back.”
The two juvenile male belugas became an attraction in Ingonish, N.S., in early July, approaching boats and kayaks and swimming with snorkellers. They made the local news and videos appeared on social media.
But while entertaining for the humans, and possibly for the whales as well, the human contact is a poor substitute for the social interaction with their own kind that belugas crave. And becoming too comfortable around boats can lead to fatal propeller strikes.
“We have found that virtually all juvenile beluga whales who become attracted and habituated to people and boats, become injured to some degree the longer they remain in close contact with people,” said Catherine Kinsman, project director at the Whale Stewardship Project.
Kinsman was preparing to head to Ingonish for an educational event in mid-July to encourage the locals to avoid interaction with the whales. She had been involved in last year’s rescue, and looking at photos of the Ingonish whales one night, she noticed a distinctive scar pattern on the head of one.
“I just thought, I’ m sure I have seen that,” she said. She stayed up all night analyzing photos of the rescued whale and found enough evidence to confirm her hunch. On July 14 she sent an email to Michaud.
“She wrote to me at 6:15 in the morning and said, ‘Robert, I haven’t been able to sleep all night. I think we found your whale,’” Michaud recalled.
The 2017 rescue was an intricate operation involving Fisheries and Oceans Canada, conservation groups and veterinarians from the Université de Montréal, Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium and the Vancouver Aquarium.
The whale was netted in the Nepisiguit River, transported to the Bathurst airport, flown for 40 minutes to Rivière-du-Loup, Que., and driven to the port of Cacouna to be taken out on a boat and released.
With a population of fewer than 900 animals, and declining every year, scientists calculated than even just one additional healthy whale make could make a difference to the species’ survival.
But now that the whale has been shown to be “vagrant,” in Michaud’s words, it is unclear whether the effort was worth it.
“Should these kinds of operations be part of our tool box to help the population?” Michaud wondered. “Some people do these operations just for compassion. But this was definitely oriented toward conservation.”
Véronique Lesage, a research scientist and beluga specialist with Fisheries and Oceans was surprised to hear the rescued beluga had strayed again.
“This shows he survived. He seems to be in good shape,” she said. “But to see him so far away, it raises question for us at Fisheries and Oceans about the chance of success of these operations.”
Michaud cannot explain what has drawn the animal, estimated to be between three and five years old, away from its home waters again. Every summer a few young belugas head to the ocean, with one group making it as far as New York two years ago.
“We don’t know how many juveniles do it every year,” he said. “We don’t know if they do come back. … As we observe in humans and other species, all juveniles are not the same. Some are more adventurous. Definitely this one seems to be one of the adventurous ones.”
With adventure comes danger; Michaud said fresh scars on the tail of the rescued whale show it was hit by a boat recently. But as long as the whale is not trapped, there is no question of another flight home.
Kinsman hopes the beluga has got its wandering out of its system. It and the other whale have not been seen in Ingonish for about a week.
“Assuming that they haven’t just popped into another community, they are out there free swimming and hopefully on their way back to the St. Lawrence,” she said.