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No chance now for beluga whales trapped under ice
Arctic hunters to shoot mammals
This young beluga was spotted off Maine last year. Up to 80 N.W.T. animals may have to be killed.
This young beluga was spotted off Maine last year. Up to 80 N.W.T. animals may have to be killed.
Photograph by : The Associated Press
The Province
Published: Thursday, November 16, 2006
TUKTOYAKTUK, N.W.T. -- Arctic hunters were reluctantly gathering harpoons and rifles yesterday to kill beluga whales that have been trapped for weeks in saltwater lakes and now have only one small air hole remaining.
Although residents had hoped the dozens of belugas would find their way back to the Beaufort Sea before ice blocked the way out, many didn't make it.
"We're going to harvest as many as we can," said Paul Voudrach, local representative of the territorial government's Environment Department.
About 200 beluga were first spotted in early August by hunters in the Husky Lakes area south of Tuktoyaktuk, a string of saltwater inlets linked to the ocean through a 100-metre-wide channel. There were still about 80 of the white mammals left in the lakes by late October, but by then the lakes and the channel were quickly freezing over.
A storm last weekend froze the channel almost solid and left the whales with a single breathing hole about the area of a small apartment.
"Escape is quite impossible now," said Chuck Gruben, leader of the hunt.
Killing the whales while they're still in good shape is better than leaving them to slowly freeze under the ice, said Voudrach.
"[People] don't like seeing animals suffer," he said.
Hunters will gather around the breathing hole and wait for the belugas to surface for air.
"Sooner or later they're going to have to come up in that one hole," Gruben said.
One hunter will harpoon the animal and another will shoot it with a rifle. Six others will be on hand to haul the whales out of the water.
They will be butchered right on the ice and the meat and muktuk (the outer covering of the animal) will be distributed to area communities.
© The Vancouver Province 2006