By: Arin
In 2001, the cannery at Alitak Bay, Alaska hosted an unusual visitor. 100 miles south of Kodiak town, Alitak is a still mostly wild region whose vast map of islands and inlets is home to abundant wildlife and infrequent human presence. The tight-knit group of fishermen, cannery workers, and villagers who live there often spread word of exciting new happenings, be it a beached whale drawing in grizzly bears, a big patch of salmon berries, or a strange boat at the cannery docks. So when we got word of this unusual new visitor, our family piled into our little aluminum skiff and made our way along the coast to the nearby salmon cannery.
The fishermen's dock is in the lee of the century-old cannery. At the whim of the tides, the wooden pathways rise and fall, revealing colonies of blue mussels and starfish. White anemones resembling overgrown cauliflower cling to the pilings that suspend the cannery buildings over the open water. We've been tying our boats up here since we bought our set net site in the 90s, as have hundreds more before us.
Protected from the wind, the water there is usually calm, clear enough to reveal shoals of silver fish. Periodic dumping of salmon guts from the cannery pipes also ensures the constant presence of hundreds of seabirds, along with their accompanying cacophony. It was a lively and sheltered area for the cannery's unusual visitor that summer.
My siblings and I were told to lie on our stomachs on the old wooden dock and tap the water in front of us with the flat of our hands. We all did so enthusiastically and within moments a watery teal shape moved out from under the cannery buildings. It grew larger and whiter until a bulbous cream-colored head broke the surface: a beluga whale.
Belugas are not typically found in Kodiak Island. There are five populations in Alaska and they roam the Cook Inlet, Bristol Bay, the Bering Sea, the Chukchi Sea, and the Beaufort Sea. The closest population to us would have been the Cook Inlet belugas to the northeast. We never knew why this one was here, alone. Though it is likely that it was a young male exploring on his own (not uncommon). Whatever the reason, The beluga's natural propensity for social contact made its arrival an unforgettable experience for us.
The folks at the cannery dubbed the whale Camai'i, (pronounced Chah-my) a friendly greeting in the local Sugpiaq language. We used the feminine pronoun for no other reason than that it seemed appropriate for such a graceful creature. Camai'i came reliably to the palm-slapping we did at the docks, her huge body turquoise beneath the water. Her pale gray coloration meant she was not quite full grown, since they become a creamy white after about 5 years.
Belugas are naturally curious, as are most Arctic animals, and this one was no different. She would surface regularly with a burst of sea spray and let us stroke her rubbery forehead, opening her mouth to show us her conical teeth and pink tongue.
(A note from 20 years' hindsight: even when such a situation presents itself, it's not advisable to pet wild animals. It stresses them out (think like an anxiety attack) and habituates them to humans, leaving them vulnerable to injury in the future. Wild animals can also carry various diseases that might be harmful to humans. If you see an animal in distress, contact a wildlife rehabilitation clinic first. Usually the best course of action is to leave them alone.)
Camai'i stayed at the cannery for most of the summer before she disappeared. We all like to think that she rejoined her pod up in Cook Inlet, and is still living there happily now (possible, since belugas are thought to live 35-50 years in the wild.)
Belugas in Norway
While I saw more beluga pods over the years, off in the distance on the Anchorage coasts, it was another 18 years before I had a similar up-close experience. I was conducting field work in Svalbard on the local seabird cliffs. It involved sitting still on a rocky outcrop 100 ft above a stony beach for 4 hours at a time above the open blue fjord.
My team and I were watching the local Brünnich’s guillemot colony (thick-billed murre in North America) through our spotting scope and binoculars, looking to re-sight leg bands from previous years. Sitting on the exposed cliff face in direct wind some 650 miles south of the North Pole for a few straight hours can be a little cold, so my partner and I took occasional hot chai breaks from our Antarctica-resistant thermoses. As we sat there on the outcrop, sipping chai and watching the passing fulmars and glaucous gulls, our third team member radioed us : "There's a pod of belugas headed your way!"
We quickly grabbed our binoculars and cameras and sat on the cliff edge, peering over the precipice to examine the blue and teal water below. A few stray guillemots eyed us suspiciously but continued with their endless warbling.
After another minute we saw them: a huge pod of beluga whales (hvithval in Norwegian, literally white whale). They swam slowly past us and close to the beach, moving right underneath our anchored work boat, a few even stopping to examine it. There were large white adults and small gray babies, breaching every few seconds as they swam past us. And they kept coming. For almost twenty-five minutes an endless parade of belugas swam past us, over 137 of them in total. There was only the sound of their endless breaching and the muted calls of seabirds. It was equally peaceful and thrilling.
We had another extraordinary sight that day as well: A pair of blue whales made their way into Isfjorden while we drove home. Even from ten km away we could see their massive spouts as they breached.
It wasn't our last experience with the Svalbard belugas either. They stayed in the fjord, and we found them again outside a glacier an hour's boat ride away a few days later. They breached around us, but never got too close. We would cut our engine and just float for a bit, watching the massive group swim tranquilly past us. The Arctic is a good place for moments like this, where you can remove all noise and distractions and just be for a moment.
My team and I in survival suits outside the glacier, watching the beluga pod from afar in mid-June
Beluga Biology and Conservation
While beautiful, it doesn't take much to remind you that the Arctic can be one of the harshest environments on Earth and requires particular adaptations for those who seek its brief summer productivity. Belugas are one of the forms of life uniquely adapted to the high Arctic.
The white whales are colored so, for example, to aid in their camouflage against the ice. They do not have dorsal fins, so they can more easily navigate the sea ice and hide from predatory orcas. They are also known to travel with narwhals, their closest relatives, and bowhead whales, which can keep holes in the sea ice open through the winter.
During the summer, belugas live in large pods, up to several hundred or thousand strong. Because of this, they also have various social adaptations. Their large heads (called melons) allow them to have a diverse series of facial expressions and sounds at their disposal, and they use clicks and whistles and chirps to communicate with their pod.
Like most Arctic animals, belugas are threatened by human activity and climate change. Because belugas are arctic predators, bioaccumulation (the process by which concentrations of pollution accumulate in the bodies of animals and magnifies as it goes up the food chain) affects them strongly. They also rely on sea ice for protection from predators, and as it melts they lose this benefit. There may also be other invisible, insidious effects of climate change that have yet to be described by science.
Our work boat anchored off a small bird sanctuary island and our team attempting to read guillemot bands using rock climbing equipment on the cliff where we saw the belugas
As an environmentalist and scientist, it is a privilege to view wild animals in their own world, sometimes closer than I ever would have thought. But it is also a burden to understand in heart-breaking detail how badly damaged those worlds have become. Going forward, it is always helpful to have those tranquil moments with wild creatures. Even if it just a bird landing unusually close to you outside, a butterfly that flew past your face, or a beluga pod that spent half an hour going by.
These moments in the outdoors engender a stillness and disregard for time, and a gratitude for being privy to such an experience. It helps remind us what we will lose if they are gone, and why it is our responsibility to protect them.
