WHEN Pierre B茅land saw five white whales huddled together, he
switched on his hydrophone to record them. All he heard was the odd screech or
squawk. Then a startling crescendo: all the belugas were squeaking, whistling
and gurgling at once. The fracas lasted three minutes, then stopped. What was
this? Soon after, a newborn beluga calf bobbed to the surface.
But B茅land鈥檚 book, Beluga: A Farewell to Whales (Lyons of
Burford, $25, ISBN 1 55 821 3988) is about death, not birth. His stories
of individual whales鈥擨gor and Briz, the 鈥淪oviet spy鈥� belugas, who
accidentally escape into the Black Sea and find themselves celebrities in
Turkey, and the abandoned little whale with the custom-made helmet鈥攁re
sprinkled lightly through a grim story. B茅land thinks the St Lawrence
belugas, and whales generally, are doomed.
He became involved with belugas in 1982 when asked to inspect a dead one on
the shore of the St Lawrence River. Since then, B茅land has seen 180 dead
belugas with bloated spleens, stomach ulcers and cancerous tumours鈥攁bout
15 a year from a population of only 500.
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B茅land鈥檚 work has shown that Beluga blubber is full of toxins: DDT,
dieldrin and PCBs. 鈥淏ecause of the hazardous nature of these compounds, ships on
the St Lawrence carrying waste with more than fifty milligrams of PCBs per
kilogram require a special transit permit,鈥� he writes.
B茅land intersperses historical scenes, such as the Quebec government鈥檚
1929 air bombing campaign against the belugas, with his own experiences.
Unfortunately, you need a whale鈥檚 sonar to find your way from one time period to
another. Although at times tiresomely sentimental, Beluga is still a
beautiful tribute to the small white whale.
