Orr, a project lead with the Arctic Research Division of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, has been catching belugas this way since the 1980s. But on his first day on the water in Churchill this past summer, everything Orr thought he knew about catching whales was challenged.<\/p>\n
All day, his team waited for an opportunity that never came. They tried to herd the whales and push them ashore, but the animals refused. Instead, the whales swam beneath the boat, following it as if it were an oversized beach ball\u2014a behavior that Orr had never seen. \u201cThe herders became the herded,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are wild animals, they are unpredictable, and their environment is always changing, so you have to be prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n
![](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/ig_churchillbeluga51_13.jpg\")
<\/a>Orr and his team trying, and failing, to catch a whale with a hoop net. Photo by Isabelle Groc<\/p><\/div>\n
\n
Compared to their counterparts in Alaska or the North Atlantic, Hudson Bay\u2019s belugas are faring reasonably well. They survived industrial whaling (until it came to an end in 1968), and the hunt by aquariums for live whales (which took over until 1992).<\/p>\n
Today, the western Hudson Bay beluga population counts about 57,300 animals, and their summer congregations in the bay\u2019s tributaries, including the Seal, Nelson, and Churchill estuaries, are the largest in the world. Yet ongoing climate change means that conditions in the once-safe bay are changing, and this period of brief respite could soon come to an end.<\/p>\n
Compared to just a decade ago, the ice-free season now lasts four weeks longer, and the extent of sea ice cover has reduced dramatically. With the receding ice, new predators, such as killer whales, are entering the bay and its tributaries.\u00a0\u201cBelugas seem to be very adaptable for finding ways to eat,\u201d says Steve Ferguson, a research scientist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada, who was also part of Orr\u2019s tagging expedition. \u201cBut I don\u2019t think they can find ways to escape killer whale predation if there is no ice around them to hide in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The reduced ice cover may also lead to an extended shipping season in and out of the Port of Churchill, and an increase in industrial development, putting the belugas at risk of noise disturbance and pollution.<\/p>\n
In a proactive bid to save the whales, the Manitoba provincial government recently released a plan to protect the belugas\u2019 habitat. \u201cThe idea is to put in place protection measures and get the ball rolling while this population is still healthy,\u201d says Kristin Westdal, a marine biologist with the Pew Charitable Trusts\u2019 Oceans North Canada, who worked with the province to develop the plan.<\/p>\n
But to protect the belugas\u2019 habitat, the policymakers first need to know which areas are most important to the whales. Hence, Orr and his satellite tags.<\/p>\n
\n
Orr and his indefatigable team have been trying again and again to drive the whales into the shallows, and still the belugas won\u2019t be herded.<\/p>\n
\u201cBelugas do what they do and that\u2019s why I love them,\u201d he says. \u201cI am not their boss.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is humbling when they get the best of you,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n
After three frustrating days on the water, Orr decides to take a different approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you change your method it can be pretty intense because it feels like starting over,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
The team cast a long net into the water, using it to surround a group of belugas in deeper water. Within seconds, Orr catches his first whale.<\/p>\n
After surrounding the whale with a net, the team finally manage to catch it. Photo by Isabelle Groc<\/p><\/div>\n
Over the next few days, Orr and his team tag eight more belugas. A trip that began as failure turned into one of the group\u2019s best.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to have a couple of different tools in the marine mammal toolbox,\u201d he says. \u201cYou can\u2019t just rely on one method because it worked 10 years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n
In the months that followed, Orr used the tags to track the whales until the last tag stopped transmitting in mid-December. While Orr had hoped the tags would last longer, what he did see surprised him: the whales seemed to have delayed their northward winter migration compared to other whales tagged in the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the joy of being able to tag different whales in different locations in different years,\u201d he says. \u201cEach time, your knowledge has increased, and that\u2019s so gratifying.\u201d<\/p>\n
From a policy perspective, Orr\u2019s tagging is paying off, too. Pew\u2019s Westdal used Orr\u2019s tracking data to help calculate which areas seem most critical to the whales. When combined with previous research, the tags show that \u201cbelugas are tightly associated with the coastline,\u201d says Westdal, \u201cwhich is significant when you are looking at protections and understanding how to look after this population.\u201d<\/p>\n
The province\u2019s plan is now going out for public consultation. No formal protections currently exist for the western Hudson Bay belugas\u2019 habitat, and the province is looking to change that. Crucially, they\u2019re looking to the federal government for support, and want to see the whale habitat near Churchill included in the country\u2019s existing plan to protect 10 percent of its marine and coastal areas by the end of the decade<\/a>.<\/p>\n *This sentence was updated for clarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Churchill\u2019s belugas may be headed for trouble, and Jack Orr wants to help them. But first he has to catch one.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12652,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"acf":{"hero_video_url":null,"hero_video_caption":"","deck":"Churchill\u2019s belugas may be headed for trouble, and Jack Orr wants to help them. But first he has to catch one.","authors_group":[{"by_group":"by","contributors_group":[15559]}],"word_count_override":"","podbean1":"","podbean2":"","redirect":"","geolocation":{"address":"58.751580, -94.19889","lat":58.75158,"lng":-94.19889},"related":[16128,16209],"twitterimage":13574,"facebookimage":13573,"twitterdescription":"","edited":"","factchecked":"","code":"","no_old_story_flag":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/16911"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/custom_news"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/16911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20735,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/16911\/revisions\/20735"}],"acf:post":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/features\/16209"},{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/features\/16128"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hakaimagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}