Whats killing the white whales of the St. Lawrence?
For centuries, beluga (white whales) of the St. Lawrence Estuary had no shortage of enemies. First Nation peoples and New France colonists hunted them for oil, food, and leather. Commercial hunting was intensive from the 1880’s to the 1950’s. The beluga population has fallen from a pre-commercial hunt level of perhaps 10,000 to about 1,100 animals at present. But commercial hunting ended in 1955, with a complete ban in 1979. Natural predators like killer whales are now rarely seen in the St. Lawrence. The Greenland shark is believed to scavenge carcasses and may attack young, weak, or sick beluga, but is likely of little threat. So can we expect that the beluga population will increase, or recover to about 10,000? “There’s no hunting and little if any predation,” says Dr. Lena Measures, research scientist at the Maurice Lamontagne Institute in Mont-Joli, Quebec. “But there’s also no apparent growth or recovery of the population. The question is, why?” Possible threats to recovery of th
