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magazine / ma06
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March/April 2006 issue |
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Beluga ballet
Churchill is not just the polar bear capital of the world, it is also the site
of an annual spectacle of whale song and dance
By Glen Petrie with photography by
Mike Macri
 Like
so many before me, I came to Churchill, Man., in search of an intimate encounter
with a great white mammal. As the polar bear capital of the world, Churchill
is the place where you can look one of the Earth’s most fearsome predators
in the eye without losing your head (from the safety of a Tundra Buggy) as
the bears migrate each autumn from the pack ice of Hudson Bay to their denning
sites south of town. But there are few polar bears in Churchill in August.
While the Lords of the Arctic conserve their energy, the Canaries of the Sea
come out to play and I was here to cavort with the charmingly friendly belugas
in Hudson Bay.
Roughly 57,000 beluga whales live in western Hudson Bay, and as many as 3,000
summer in the Churchill River estuary, where they moult and feed on caplin.
A visitor need only stand on the rocky shore — outcrops of Precambrian
shield known as Churchill quartzite — to see them rolling in the distance
like schools of fish. A couple of tour operators have sprung up to help visitors
see, hear and even swim with these curious and delightful cetaceans.
My first encounter with the Hudson Bay belugas came in a local tour boat powered
by jets of water rather than a propeller, to avoid injuring the whales, and
equipped with a hydrophone wired to on-board speakers that provided an amplified
concert of whale songs. Displaying a broad range of sounds, more than nearly
any other whale species, the beluga has earned its "sea canary" nickname.
While the boat idled among the frolicking whales, we were entertained by a
surprisingly diverse repertoire of chirps and cries.
For the rest of this story, visit your local newsstand or go to our store to buy this issue.
For related stories, facts and figures, visit CG’s Explorer Online
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