ON HUDSON BAY (AP) - Playful great white beluga whales are bringing joy and healing to Hudson Bay. Their cheerful chirping sounds in an environment and economy threatened by warming waters that are melting sea ice, starving polar bears and changing the entire food chain.
Loud and curious belugas swarm boats here, clicking, bumping and frolicking. At any time during the summer, the Churchill River, which flows into Hudson Bay, can see as many as 4,000 belugas cruising up and down the waterway, encircling ships of all sizes. That makes it difficult to find a place where you won't see them, says whale biologist Valeria Vergara, senior scientist at the Raincoast Conservation Foundation. It's in their nature.
"The social butterflies of the whale world... You can see it in Churchill," Vergara said.
The city of Churchill is counting on this to continue. The predominantly indigenous community, which has been lifted out of economic doldrums by polar bear tourism, faces the prospect of declining bear numbers due to climate change. So it is counting on another white beast, the beluga, to come to the rescue and lure summer tourists - if the marine mammals can also survive the changes at this gateway to the Arctic.
There is something healing about belugas. Just ask Erin Greene.
Greene was attacked by a polar bear in 2013. She wouldn't go into details about the attack, but Mayor Mike Spence said she was thrashed by a bear that held her in its jaws. A neighbor hit the bear with a shovel, and a third person used a truck to scare off the bear, which was later found and killed. Years later, Greene said that contact with the social whales helped her emerge from post-traumatic stress disorder. Now she goes into the water with them, on a paddleboard, and sings to and with the whales. She also rents paddleboards to tourists so they can do the same.
Greene, who is not from Churchill but started working in the tourism industry, tried yoga, which eventually led to paddle boarding in Hawaii. It made her feel a little better, so she thought she would take it back to Churchill, where there is not only water, but also belugas. And that helped her heal, "through the different stages of dealing with trauma," she said.
But it's not just her, she said. When she takes her clients into the water, inches from the whales, they feel better, too.
"I've never seen an animal, except maybe puppies bring so much joy to people," Greene said. "Everyone is smiling when they come out of the water... Everyone is just experiencing joy. And it is the whales that ensure that."
"With beluga whales, I think the connection is very different than with any other animal, because the whales are actually choosing to interact with you. They want to play," Greene said. "That's really what sets them apart from other animals. They are so gentle. They have no desire to hurt people."
It doesn't hurt that the Whales got to know Greene. Vergara has no doubt that they know her.
Greene sings to the whales, including the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine." She also sings the Will Ferrell Eurovision film song "Husavik (My Hometown)" with the lyrics "where the whales can live because they are friendly people."
That text is close to reality, says whale expert Vergara.
"They really have traits that are so similar to human culture, so we can really empathize with them," Vergara said. "They form communities and networks. They work together and help raise each other's young. They are incredibly vocal. They are probably, along with humans, one of the most acoustically active or vocal mammals on Earth."
Unlike humpback whales, belugas' sounds are not songs with rhythm and pattern, she said. When she puts her hydrophones in the water to record the sounds of the whales, "you really don't think, 'Oh, I hear singing.' You think 'I'm in a jungle full of birds'."
It's a cacophony of clicking and whistling. But it's not random, it's like being at a loud festival, Vergara said.
"It makes you wonder what it is that they're communicating with each other," she said. "They absolutely rely on sound to maintain these very complex societies."
Research has shown that individual belugas have a distinct call that they use in communication, much like a name, Vergara said. And it takes a few years for young whales to learn their parents' names and their own. But whales that are related or hang out together have calls or names that sound similar, a kind of surname, she said.
Belugas are nicknamed the "canary of the sea" because of their vocalizations, but it could also apply like the canary in the coal mine, warning of an increasingly dangerous environment, Vergara said.
Sea ice is shrinking everywhere in the Arctic, including here in Hudson Bay. And even though this is probably the largest beluga population in the world, scientists are still a bit concerned.
"The disappearing ice will impact them," Vergara said. "We don't know how they will respond to shifts in water temperature, shifts in food availability, shifts in regular prey availability."
The change in ice is part of an overall change in the base of the food chain: plankton. When those little creatures change, it means "a whole shift in belugas' prey base," Vergara said.
Arctic cod, a high-fat fish that plays a key role in belugas' diets, is in decline, says beluga expert Pierre Richard of the Northern Studies Center in Churchill and author of three whale books. But he said it's an open question whether belugas can adapt.
Research shows belugas in the Beaufort Sea are not as fat as they used to be, but scientists don't know about those in Hudson Bay, Richard said. Another problem is that killer whales that hunt belugas are entering Hudson Bay more often, and less sea ice means there are fewer places for belugas to hide, said he and University of Washington marine mammal scientist Kristin Laidre.
"Whether belugas in Hudson Bay suffer from these ecosystem changes is not at all clear," Richard said.
Beluga whales, unlike polar bears, are not listed as endangered or vulnerable as a species, although a population in Alaska is. There are as many as 200,000 belugas worldwide and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, which compiles a global list of endangered species, calls them a species of "least concern," so Vergara said she is often asked why they would not concentrate on animals that are in greater danger.
"I would say the threat to animal cultures could happen much faster than the extinction of an entire species," Vergara said. And when subpopulations of belugas are wiped out, their cultures disappear too.
"It's like losing a human language or a human culture," Vergara said. "We should care."
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