A health check-up for the beluga whale

An Inuvialuit community works with scientists to monitor the population

On the shores of the Beaufort Sea, an Inuvialuit community has forged a valuable partnership with researchers at Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) from the Freshwater Institute (FWI) in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and the Institute of Ocean Sciences (IOS) in Sidney British Columbia. For over two decades, the Inuvialuit, Inuit people of the western Arctic, have helped DFO to monitor beluga whales in these far northern waters.

Since belugas have long been a dietary staple for Canada's Inuit, the hunters of Tuktoyaktuk actively hunt the beluga, landing them at Hendrickson Island near the community. The landed whales are tallied; data and tissue samples gathered. DFO scientists count on the information to explore questions about the whale population's health and conditions in the broader arctic environment.

Monitors from the community are working with hunters to gather data on whales landed at Hendrickson Island. Photo by: S. Raverty 2008.

It's a complex task. This past July, for example, community monitors worked with twenty-four whales, all harvested by Tuktoyaktuk hunters. Researcher Lisa Loseto says the hunters understood the need to bring whales to the island for sampling, and they were ready and willing to help. Monitors Frank and Nellie Pokiak brought their family to the Hendrickson Island research camp for the whole month of July to do the job. Working quickly to preserve their samples, they recorded each whale's size and sex, measured the thickness of blubber and took tissue samples: muktuk (or blubber/skin), muscle, liver, kidney, blood and urine. Another community member documented the hunters' names, the number of whales taken and other statistics. A veterinarian who works closely with DFO scientists looked at pathogens carried by the whales.

It was a comprehensive program, because the scientists aimed to get as much information as possible to provide a baseline for studying changes in the ecosystem. The island camp was a hub of beluga-centered activity. Two students from Tuktoyaktuk participated in a mentoring program on beluga sampling. The Tuktoyaktuk Hunters and Trappers Committee advised on the study and helped hire the camp cooks, students and boat drivers who all participated in beluga sampling.

The success of the Hendrickson Island program is founded on the excellent rapport between the scientists, the community and the whale hunters, developed over many years. When the monitoring began in the 1980s, people knew that the north was changing, and that the impacts of development and climate change would certainly provoke changes in the Beaufort Sea environment. Both the hunters and the scientists had begun to wonder how the beluga would fare in a changing world.

Tissue samples yield valuable information about a beluga's physical condition. Photo by: S. Raverty 2008.

Belugas are environmental sentinels

Belugas have a remarkable ability to thrive in northern waters. The majestic white whales travel the cold seas in small groups called pods, searching for ice-free breathing areas, and for food – particularly Arctic cod. Their blubber, an Inuit delicacy, is an energy reserve and an insulator, often measuring 8 centimetres thick. Yet belugas are also susceptible to environmental stresses – Beluga health can be an excellent mirror of the health of their ecosystem as a whole.

In more southern climates, for example, where the whales face pressures from industrial development, they have picked up alarming levels of chemical contaminants, PCBs, mercury and flame retardants. As top predators, belugas can be particularly vulnerable to such toxic chemicals as they concentrate up the food chain.

Scientists have long known that such contaminants can harm organisms. They may be responsible for such health effects as decreased growth, increased mortality and reproduction problems. But little is known about contaminant-related health effects in arctic marine life. Since belugas are at the top of the marine food web, they are important environmental indicators.

For the Inuvialuit people, these issues are key. Warning signs in beluga whales may also signal human health concerns for this important component of the northern people's diet.

When monitoring of the Beaufort belugas began in the 1980s, contamination was a key focus, and Inuvialuit assistance was critical. Collecting tissue samples can be a logistical challenge, and whales' age and sex differences complicate the picture. Local communities could gather the data the scientists needed.

Linking science with traditional knowledge

Collaboration among hunters, communities and researchers was fostered by the Fisheries Joint Management Committee (FJMC), a co-management body representing the Inuvialuit and Government of Canada. The idea was to maintain a healthy ecosystem to allow a sustainable harvest. With this objective, the FJMC works to combine forces and link science, traditional knowledge and community-based monitoring. By gathering different forms of knowledge, the FJMC aims to insure the future health of the population that also reflects a healthy ecosystem. Using funding from the Northern Contaminants Program of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, communities across the Inuvialuit Settlement Region began to sample belugas from subsistence hunts.

This partnership between scientists and communities has resulted in one of the largest long-term data sets for a marine mammal in the Canadian Arctic. To build on early successes, researchers at the FWI and Yellowknife office launched a collaborative, multi-partnered monitoring program in 2000 at Hendrickson Island to examine the fate and transport of contaminants such as mercury and PCBs, as well as understand food web structure, beluga diet and disease prevalence. Local beluga monitors worked closely with hunters to log in the whales and collect tissue samples. Building on the success of this program, scientists from the IOS initiated a beluga health study in 2007 in the same area. The camp not only involved community and DFO personnel, but also included DFO partners and collaborators from the University of Northern British Columbia and the British Columbia Animal Health Centre.

Happily for the researchers, the data gathered thus far have been positive. Researcher Lisa Loseto says that preliminary results show the Beaufort Sea belugas to be relatively uncontaminated compared to their southern counterparts. She points out that this is a pretty early stage to draw conclusions, but it appears that organic contaminant levels are much lower than found in belugas in the St. Lawrence.

Since the whales can act as an early warning of any undesirable changes, however, the monitoring continues to be critical. In the north, the pace of change is increasing. Northerners face possible risks from offshore oil and gas development along the Beaufort coast, for example, and climate change is melting sea ice.

A changing climate may well have an impact on the beluga and other organisms. Already, the area where the Beaufort Sea beluga population summers has seen some of the most significant losses of sea ice due to climate warming. Arctic cod are a sea ice associated fish and are the belugas most important food species. Loss of ice could mean loss of cod, so changes in cod numbers could affect the belugas. This underlines the importance of taking an ecosystem approach to examine the health of beluga whales.

The community-based monitoring is important to corroborate DFO's analysis of climate effects. Beluga monitoring will also provide important data to guide oil and gas development in the region.

Thanks to the work already done on the Beaufort Sea belugas, scientists are in a better position to monitor the changes through an ecosystem approach. What's abundantly clear, says researcher Lisa Loseto, is that “we've had a strong partnership with the community.” The Hendrickson Island work “goes to show how well DFO and the community can work together to produce good science."