Beluga Whale: Canaries of the sea

On this episode of Rarified listeners are introduced to the beluga whale. Renowned for its unique vocalizations and smiling visage, the beluga whale inhabits the Arctic and sub-Arctic waters. With conservation scientist William Halliday, the podcast dives into the life of belugas, exploring their behaviors, unique adaptations, and the threats they face, such as climate change and increased human activity in the Arctic. They discuss conservation efforts, traditional ecological knowledge from Indigenous communities, and how studies like acoustic monitoring and tagging help understand and protect these 'canaries of the sea.'

www.arcticnoise.ca

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/white-wilderness-lemming-suicide/

further reading: 

Martin et al. 2023 https://doi.org/10.1111/mms.12978 

Halliday et al. 2019 https://doi.org/10.14430/arctic69294

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Rarified Podcast

00:26 Exploring the Beluga Whale

01:36 Interview with William Halliday

02:36 Beluga Whale Behavior and Social Structure

08:33 Beluga Whale Migration Patterns

13:40 Impact of Climate Change on Belugas

16:19 Human Activity and Beluga Conservation

18:19 Research Methods for Studying Belugas

21:40 Indigenous Partnerships in Beluga Research

23:34 Indigenous Partnerships in Arctic Research

24:43 Community Consultations and Permits

25:35 Fieldwork and Data Collection

27:27 Memorable Beluga Encounters

31:04 Ecotourism and Beluga Conservation

35:51 Challenges and Successes in Conservation

36:38 Career Path and Conservation Ethos

38:58 Lemmings Myth and Reality

40:36 Supporting Beluga Populations

44:16 Success Stories and Future Hopes

46:23 Conclusion and Farewell

Transcript

Theme Song 0:00

In every stream, in every tree, a story lives, a legacy. Let's listen close, let's take a stand, to keep the wild across the land. In every stream, in every tree, a story lives, a legacy.

Meredith 0:23

Welcome. You found us. Let the adventure begin. This is Rarified, the podcast where we're going to learn to love some of our rarest and most imperiled species. I'm your host, Meredith Meeker. And today we're traveling almost as far North as you can get. So pack your parka and your dry suit, because you're going to need it to explore the underwater world of the beluga whale. The beluga whale is mostly famous because of its smiling face and generally playful nature. It was featured heavily in marine land commercials when I was growing up, and actually most recently it showed up on my TV again during a Super Bowl ad about credit cards of all things. So obviously this media friendly species might not be new to you, but I'm sure you're going to learn a lot. The fun facts will be coming at you hard and fast. Beluga whales can be found throughout the Arctic and sub Arctic waters, spanning Russia, Greenland, the United States, and of course, Canada. The population of beluga whales globally is considered

1:24

Secure.

Meredith 1:25

But many of its sub populations in Canada and the U. S. are considered threatened and endangered. There are many different populations of belugoil that have different behaviors and different threats. And we'll get into that more with our guest, William Halliday. William Halliday works for Wildlife Conservation Society Canada as their Conservation Scientist and Arctic Acoustics Program Lead. William lives in Whitehorse and has worked for Wildlife Conservation Society Canada since 2016. research focuses on understanding the influences of climate change and human activity on Arctic marine mammals. And his main way of studying these mammals is through passive acoustic monitoring or underwater listening. And even better, he was kind enough to share some of his clips of beluga vocalizations. Now, enough of my vocalizations. Let's jump into the episode on beluga whales with our guest, William Halliday. Awesome. I'm so excited to be talking about the beluga today. This is my first episode on a marine mammal. And we just start off with like, what is a beluga and what makes it a beluga?

William Halliday 2:43

Sounds good. So a beluga is a toothed whale or a dontoseat whale, as we would call it scientifically it is very unique in terms of whales. So other toothed whales. These are your. Dolphins and porpoise, for example. So killer whales are are a really good example of what people think of when they think of a toothed whale. Belugas are also also a toothed whale and they're called so because they have a row of teeth. Different than a baleen whale that has these big long baleen plates like a blue whale, for example. So Beluga whales are pretty much pure white or a creamy color. Their their calves are more of a gray or mottled color. They do not have a proper dorsal fin. So dorsal fin is the big fin that sticks out the back. Think of a killer whale with a big triangular shaped fin that sticks out. Belugas don't really have that. They just have a little ridge going along their back. And this is an adaptation to living in the ice. So they can kind of go in and out of the ice and they don't have to worry about getting hung up on pieces of ice. Belugas are about 2 to 3 meters long and move that into feet. We're talking about 6 to 9 feet. The males are a little bit bigger than the females. They're known for being an aquarium. Actually, they, they, they seem to do a little bit better in captivity than some other whales do, although there's a trend towards no longer keeping whales in captivity, which is probably a good thing. But People seeing them in captivities, the whales are super interactive. So they're, they're really playful. They do just these incredible movements in water and you can hear them and that's really, in terms of the defining feature of a beluga, they're called the canaries of the sea. That's one of their names. And the reason for that is because they're just so vocal, they make so many different sounds, and it seems like every beluga you listen to makes a different set of sounds as opposed to some species that say only make the same four sounds over and over again, this species makes a lot of different sounds,

Meredith 4:38

yeah, I'm, I mean, you're talking about how much sound they make this, this, because they're like a very social animal, do we think? And then I've also, they kind of have, is it like a melon that helps them

William Halliday 4:51

I was going to get to that. No,

Meredith 4:53

Okay. Awesome. So I don't want to steal your thunder.

William Halliday 4:55

no, no, no, that's good. So yes, they are incredibly social. And so this is a species that they come into estuaries often in just thousands, groups of thousands. So Churchill River in northern Manitoba is a really popular spot to go see belugas because just thousands of them come in and they, they're in big groups and they're constantly interacting with one another. And so, yeah, sound is one of the really important ways for them to communicate. In fact, that's really the only reason that they're making sound is so that they can communicate with each other. They even make individual vocalizations. So there's something they make called a contact call, and it's Hypothesize that it's unique to every individual, and it's one of the main ways that mothers and calves stay in contact with each other. That's why it's called a contact call. The mothers and calves are swimming close together, and they're just making these, these whistled pulse calls back and forth. You brought up their melon. So their melon is a big fat deposit right on their forehead.

Meredith 5:52

Okay.

William Halliday 5:59

So the melon is related to sound. It's a for their echolocation clicks specifically. It's how they focus their echolocation clicks. So echolocation clicks are used for navigating through the environment and for finding Fish and invertebrates that they're eating effectively. It's an active acoustic signal that they they ping out of their body and they listen for the echo coming back. Just like a bat does just like submarines use with their sonar. Just like someone with a fish finder or a depth sounder is using on their boat. It's the exact same idea. And so they use their melon to focus that wave. They don't use that melon for other types of calls, like their whistles that they're using to communicate with each other. They're just using their melon for their echolocation clicks.

Meredith 6:47

So they have vocalizations and echolocation, like those are two separate,

William Halliday 6:52

Exactly. We we differentiate them that way. Vocalizations are things like like humans talking. We're vocalizing, whereas echolocation isn't for communication. It's for learning about your environment. Effectively.

Meredith 7:05

so are belugas all bilingual? Like, is that a way to think about it? Like, they've got two different

William Halliday 7:11

well, bilingual is like 2 different languages, whereas we wouldn't even think of echolocation as a language. Think of it as belugas vocalized, but they also have a, a fish finder in their head. Effectively, they've got this piece of machinery that's running constantly. That's telling them about their environment that their brain is interpreting constantly, but they could also be vocalizing at the same time. They could also be talking to each other.

Meredith 7:32

Wow. Okay. So fish finder in the head, probably very useful for a animal that eats fish. That makes a lot of sense. you're talking about how they're found in estuaries and they can come in in the thousands. First, are they on all of our coasts or, cause I know they're in the Arctic. You can see them in Quebec. I didn't know you could see them in Manitoba. don't really think of Manitoba as a Marine center, but.

William Halliday 8:00

Yeah, so northern Manitoba meets up with Hudson Bay. So it is Arctic on on that coastline. And so yes, belugas are an Arctic whale species for the most part, with just a few exceptions to that. There are there's a population in the St. Lawrence, like you just mentioned. That's the furthest south population in the world. In southern Alaska, there's a population in Cook Inlet as well. So that's also decently far south. That's about as far south as I am right now in Whitehorse. So for most of Canada, that doesn't seem very far south. But in terms of belugas and where most of them live, it is the beluga population that I study is the eastern Beaufort Sea population. And so they spend their summers in the Western Canadian Arctic in the Amundsen Gulf and Beaufort Sea and the McKenzie River estuary near Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk. But then they spend their winters in the Bering Sea. So they, they travel about. 2 to 3000 kilometers on their migration and go through the Bering Strait, and they're actually around Saint Lawrence Island in that area in the Bering Sea. There are, ooh, it might be as many as eight populations in the Pacific Arctic. So this is populations that overwinter in the Bering Sea and then go to various places around Alaska and eastern Russia and that area. Move over to eastern Canada, though, and there's another I'm not going to say how many populations because I'm going to mess it up. But there are. There's I think five or six populations in the eastern Canadian Arctic, so one that lives fairly far north around, say, the community of resolute in that area, and then there are three populations that live in Hudson Bay, like the one around Churchill that I was just mentioning. That's in Western Hudson Bay. And then there's a couple more further further east along Hudson Strait and Baffin Bay. And so we have many different populations of beluga within Canada, and only one of them is in southern Canada. There's many in northern Canada. And a key defining feature there is for most of these populations, sea ice is incredibly important to them. And so belugas have these many, many different evolutionary adaptations for living in and amongst sea ice. I mentioned their dorsal fin previously. It's, it's Effectively not there so that they can spend a lot of time under the ice, but they also have a thicker skull than other toothed whales. So they can actually crack through the ice if they have to make a breathing hole because they're a mammal. They have to breathe. And so it's not like they're underwater at all times. They can say, stay down for 15 minutes or so. And they always have to find a place to come up to the surface to breathe. And so they're not in solid ice, really, really thick ice with no cracks in it. They're in thinner ice or ice that has a lot of cracks in it so they can get up to breathe.

Meredith 10:43

Oh gosh, so much information. So many follow up questions. I. I'm loving this, but they're migratory, but they stay in the Arctic. So are they considered like short migrants in terms of whales? Because whales can have huge range. And then you also have resident populations. Are they somewhere in between, or the Arctic is just small on maps and it's actually just giant in person.

William Halliday 11:08

It's population specific, and so the one that I study out of all the populations I mentioned there probably has the largest, longest migration out of all of them, 2, 000 to 3, 000 kilometers. That's not really anything to say is small, like that's a decent migration. But other populations For example, the Cumberland Sound population. So they're in, Cumberland Sound, which is on the kind of southeast side of Baffin Island, and so that's where they spend their summers. And then they come down to Hudson Strait for the winters, and that's just a few 100 kilometers south. So that's a population that is just migrating a small distance. The key thing is that. They have to find effectively like so they have their summering areas. Their summering areas are usually areas with a lot of food or with estuaries with with warm or water where they can socialize and molt and raise their young molting is where they're kind of fluffing off their skin and getting fresh skin. So that's what they want to find for the summer. And that usually also defines where they're going to go in the winter, because where they go in the winter is usually the closest place that has broken ice so that they can breathe. And so some populations like the one that I study, that's quite far. Other populations, it's a little bit closer.

Meredith 12:19

And how does this, like, if they're looking for this broken ice, but they're trying to stay under. sort of ice cover. Is that for hunting or why is that ice feature important for them?

William Halliday 12:32

Yeah. And so it's, it's, ice was more important historically in the summertime. One of their preferred prey items, or at least preferred prey items in the past Arctic cod. Are very heavily associated with sea ice, usually because they're smaller life stages are eating sea ice algae. So algae that's growing on the bottom of the sea ice. And then there's a whole food web associated with sea ice. So from that perspective, the blue tend to stay around sea ice and even still some parts of the population will still be around sea ice all summer long. At least certain populations. Anyways, the Beaufort sea population that I study, the males tend to go far offshore in the summertime and they're around sea ice. Pretty much all year round. Whereas the females with calves who tend to spend a lot more time closer to the estuaries, those are often completely free of ice during the summertime. So there's a bit of a mix. So. Ice is important for the food, but then it's also important for predator avoidance. Killer whales are effectively their main predator in the Arctic. And killer whales, as I mentioned, have that big dorsal fin, and they don't do so well in the ice. So belugas can use ice as a place to escape, effectively.

Meredith 13:40

Okay, And I mean, we also, we live in a world of climate change, sea ice. Is changing belugas are at risk is climate change a major factor or what's threatening the species?

William Halliday 13:57

Yeah, so, so, climate change is causing Big shifts in ice. That's that's for sure. Ice is breaking up earlier in the spring. It's forming later in the fall. We have less thick old ice and a lot more thin new ice. And so effectively belugas are spending a lot less time with ice. So ice. And so we are seeing a shift in terms of individuals, maybe following some individuals like big males, for example, following the ice a little bit more in the summertime, but then we were also concerned about shifting migration timing and so belugas would leave an area early enough so that they weren't going to get covered in frozen ice. Effectively. And so that timing is able to shift. Now there is, I haven't seen any studies for a few years, but there was a good study by my colleague, Donna Hauser in the kind of mid 2010s. And she found that one population of belugas that uses the Beaufort Sea and Chukchi Sea were showing A change in their migration timing effectively and and another population was not. So there's kind of mixed results right now, but generally speaking, we assume that as the ice freezes later into the fall, boogies will stick around in their summer areas for longer and longer. So we'll, we'll kind of see through time how that happens. So that's kind of one threat. But whether how much of a threat it actually is, is a question. So with climate change, we're seeing that change in sea ice. We're also seeing a changed food web. So we've got a lot of Southern species that are coming up. I mentioned earlier about Arctic cod and I think I even said how they used to be the, the main prey of belugas, but we're seeing a lot of Southern species come up like capelin and sand lance. Things that weren't in the Arctic, or at least weren't in the Arctic as much and Arctic cod were kind of the dominant species that was around that size. That's easy for a beluga to to eat. Well, now they're shifting. And so with that, there's different nutrient contents. So Arctic cod were very kind of lipid heavy or fat heavy food, whereas capelin and sand lance less so. And so yeah, we'll, we'll have to see what. Okay. The implications of that are over the long term, but we're definitely seeing changes and where the belugas live and then changes on what they're eating through time. The big threat. And actually, the biggest threat that I'm concerned about is increased human activity. So ship traffic in particular is increasing in all parts of the Arctic. And so, with ship traffic for Beluga, kind of one of the biggest things that we're concerned with is underwater noise. So ships are big and loud and sound travels really efficiently underwater. So you can hear those big, loud ships from really far away. We're talking about, like, the faintest signal of a ship. We might actually be able to pick up from 50 to 100 kilometers away. The really loud ship signals are all kind of within that 10 kilometer or five kilometer zone. But we've had some studies on belugas showing that they actually react to ship noise at 50 kilometers away. And so belugas are really sensitive, or at least some populations of belugas are really sensitive. And that leads to shifts in their behavior. If they're reacting at those distances, and then when the ship gets really close, they leave an area entirely. They're actually trying to avoid the ships. That's can definitely have some implications for where they live, what, what resources they're able to access. If they're getting scared away from really good foraging areas, then they're potentially missing out on energetics.

Meredith 17:29

And I'm also guessing that there must be times of years where they're more sensitive to disturbance or You know, maybe it puts them more at risk of predation if they're having to leave, you know, desired habitat.

William Halliday 17:43

Yeah, potentially. So when calves are pretty new and they're, they're kind of stuck to the side of their mothers all the time that's a really sensitive time for them. Times when Belugas are already kind of energetically starved, say, for example, at the end of a long winter when they've been not foraging as much. That's a time when they, when they're potentially more at risk. And that predator question is a really good one and it's one that we haven't really been able to get at yet because it's so complicated to try to answer a question like that. But it's, it's definitely something that, that we're considering and that's important to consider.

Meredith 18:17

So, complicated questions out there. This must be additionally complicated because these are underwater mammals. So, how do you even begin to answer a question like this? Like, what does your studies of belugas actually look like?

William Halliday 18:33

Yeah. So great, great question. In terms of studying animal behavior, for example, so how belugas are reacting to ships or even just how they're changing what they do over a long time period due to climate change, there's kind of three main methods that that are being used right now. The 1st is just getting out and finding out where they are doing surveys. So that could be done from a plane, or it could be done by a boat. It could even involve traditional knowledge from indigenous people. Just tracking how, how those animals are, are maybe shifting their distribution through time. I use passive acoustic monitoring. So that's where we have a hydrophone and underwater microphone that we put on the bottom of the ocean for a year at a time. So that's that's kind of the main way that I studied the distribution of belugas and also measure the noise from the ships. So. That's pretty common as well. I have a network of about 13 acoustic recorders in the western Canadian Arctic right now. So we can kind of see when are the blue is showing up at different areas through time and and how that say, shifting from 1 year to the next. And then the. Way to get the most detailed information is actually getting tracking tags on the whales. And that's complicated. Historically the best way to, to do this has been to actually catch the whales. And so a bunch of boats will kind of drive the whales into shallow water and they get stuck in a net and then they get held in the water and have a tag attached to their back and then you let them go and then you see where they go and see what they do. So we have a study on them. The Eastern Beaufort Sea belugas, and we look at that tracking data for the whales, and we compare it to tracking data for ships. And so that's, for example, how we know that belugas actually start reacting to ships out at 50 kilometers and how they change their behavior even more when they get closer to the ships, because we have kind of these simultaneous tracks of where the belugas and where the ships, Depending on the type of tag you use, you can get some really fine detailed data on how the belugas are moving through the water. Some tags even have hydrophones on them so that you can listen to what the belugas are saying and listen to what the belugas are hearing while they're moving as well. But those require some very specific types of tags that are actually haven't haven't been used on belugas too much yet, but I think that's the direction we want to, want to go in eventually here.

Meredith 20:51

I mean, getting a tag on a beluga, so are you getting in the water, like, is it shallow enough that the people are standing or are you on boats? Like, how does that work?

William Halliday 21:02

So I personally have never tagged a beluga, but I have lots of colleagues who have, and, and it is shallow water. So this is done in those estuaries where they're congregating in effectively. And so they're, they're using boats and they're, they're kind of driving the, they're, they're chasing the belugas into shallow, shallow water. And then there are people in the water with chest waders on or with dry suits on. And it's, you know, it's waste waste deep water effectively at that point, but it's the Arctic. So it's cold water.

Meredith 21:27

And you must, I mean, that obviously puts stress on the animals, so you must want to have a pretty important or like specific question you're trying to answer if you're going to put the animals through that.

William Halliday 21:40

Exactly. The, the latest tagging studies that I've seen are, are Completely in conjunction with indigenous communities that are that hunt the population for subsistence. And so they're really interested in what has, where's the population going? What's, what's stressing them out? Has their distribution changed from the last tagging study from 15 years previously, you know, those sorts of things. So some pretty important questions about, about those animals. But there's definitely a trend towards going towards less invasive tagging methodologies. So ones that don't require catching the whales, for example. So I've been working on a study on bowhead whales where we actually deploy the tags with a crossbow. So you don't, you can't really catch a bowhead whale because they're so big, but you could drive up beside them in your boat and you, you shoot it with a crossbow. The whales have really, really thick blubber. So there's no worries there about injuring the whales, but then the tag just sticks. The outside of the whale and stays on for a few weeks or a few months. And so that, that type of study would work well with belugas as well. So. You have to be a really good shot to shoot a small beluga with a tag, but

Meredith 22:48

Yeah, science is always advancing. I just saw a picture of like the first radio caller used on elk. it looked like a cartoon, like a giant magnet, like the big U and like, wow, we've come a long way, but that was just in the nineties. So, you know, obviously it's going to continue to advance and it's great that people are exploring less invasive methods, but still getting that And now we've brought up indigenous partners and communities twice now. So I feel like. We should talk about how, this is a very culturally important species to a lot of communities up north. What is the partnership like with them? Are they helping with data collection? Are they helping with forming the research questions? How, how does that partnership work?

William Halliday 23:39

yeah, that's, that's the background context of pretty much all the work that I do in the Arctic. So I guess, first and foremost, the, the indigenous people that we work with. So in the Canadian Arctic, that's Inuit in the Western Canadian Arctic, it's Inuvialuit people specifically. So these people are still very much tied to what we call traditional foods. And so, things that they're hunting and fishing and gathering from from nature and not relying on a grocery store, for example. So belugas are, are one of their important food sources. It's, it's in fact, it's one of the favorite food sources for many people in communities that I know.

Meredith 24:17

I

William Halliday 24:19

people are incredibly wary of things that are going to affect their food. Effectively, they want to have a healthy population. They want to make sure that they are having a sustainable hunt and that the population is going to be there for generations to come. And so that context is always there.

Meredith 24:36

On

William Halliday 24:38

The Canadian arctic is way more complicated than it is in pretty much anywhere else in Canada. I can't just go do research because I want to do research. I actually have to start with community consultations and figure out is the type of research that I want to do something that they're interested in. And if it is, how can I make it better? So that it actually answers the sort of questions that. They want to have answered. So I have to start with that consultation. I have to actually get support formal support from communities before I can even apply for permits to go and do the research with marine mammals. We actually we have a lot more permits required than for other species. So but the first step of that is the consultation piece before we can actually go and and get our permits. But it's also a remote environment. That's really hard to work in. And so if you don't know that environment, well, you could be in a lot of trouble in terms of just safety or spending a lot of money and not getting any data is another different side of that. So we work very closely with communities to gather all of the data that we gather. So in the, western Canadian Arctic, there are hunter trapper committees in each community, and so that's that's kind of my starting place. As I go to the hunter trapper committee, we talk about a project, and then if they're supportive of the project, and when it's time to actually go out and do the work,

Meredith 25:53

at

William Halliday 25:54

they hire on workers who know the area really well. These are typically people who spend a lot of time out on the land hunting and fishing,

Meredith 26:00

that

William Halliday 26:01

who have their own equipment and kind of know how to handle it well in those local waters.

Meredith 26:06

would be possible.

William Halliday 26:07

They, like

Meredith 26:08

there

William Halliday 26:09

research program, we go out for about a two week stint to go out and collect data. And so I have workers,

Meredith 26:15

a

William Halliday 26:16

or three workers with me the whole time, and they're keeping us safe on the water. They're helping us go and, and, and find the areas where we can collect the best data. It's just, it's such an integral part of it. Of even just the data collection part of the project. And then at the end of it, they also help us interpret the data. And so knowing what they know about the local area and the animals they have a lot of useful insight in terms of actually teasing apart what what a statistical trend that I find in the data, what that actually means in real life for those animals, for example.

Meredith 26:49

It sounds like, yes, there's probably some complications with it, but also sounds like there's a lot that the rest of Canada could learn from how the partnerships in the Arctic work and how it puts communities first. And it's great that it sounds like you guys have a really successful. Partnership. I'm sure every partnership is not without its challenges. And you're working in a very challenging and I mean, food security is a huge thing and obviously people would be very concerned about it. So I'm sure it adds a lot of layers to your work. But it also sounds like maybe you get to meet some really cool people and see some really cool places. So maybe I want to talk about that a little bit as well, because you've got a lot of. in office work, but you get out in the field. have a favorite memory from working in the field or working with Beluga?

William Halliday 27:40

So beluga, I mostly work with by listening. And so I have not seen too many beluga in the wild. I guess the like, I, I usually see them from planes, in fact. And so we, we do a bit of work scouting out areas in a plane or, or the last couple of years we've been doing aerial surveys. And so this past year, we saw a few groups of belugas which was cool. Yeah. I remember when I saw my first beluga doing the kind of when I started the research, and that was effectively unexpected. I didn't expect to see too many belugas. When we're just kind of flying from point A to point B, but we found a bunch of ice floating in the middle of the months and golf while we were going. And then suddenly there were belugas popping up everywhere. And from then on, like, I always have my face glued to the window whenever I'm flying in these areas, just because you never know what you're gonna see. But I think. Honestly, like my, my favorite beluga memories, other than just those kind of sightings from plane are actually just seeing the excitement around the community when they think of belugas nearby. So the main community that I work in in the New Velvet settlement region is Ula Hakutak, so that's on the west coast of Victoria Island. They don't get too many belugas close to the community every year. Like, usually

Meredith 28:55

Yeah.

William Halliday 28:58

probably less than 10 belugas a year. Occasionally they get a bunch more coming in, and then it's just mayhem because everyone's really excited. But compare that to other communities in the region, like Taktiaktak, who maybe get closer to 100 belugas in a year. That's a pretty big difference.

Meredith 29:13

Of

William Halliday 29:13

so people are always on the lookout for belugas because it's a favorite food and they, and and it's just such a community driven,

Meredith 29:21

to

William Halliday 29:22

cultural thing to, to go out and hunt belugas.

Meredith 29:24

We're

William Halliday 29:25

we can be busy doing some science work, and then suddenly

Meredith 29:28

going

William Halliday 29:29

hears over the radio

Meredith 29:30

of

William Halliday 29:31

or Facebook actually more likely these days that,

Meredith 29:33

And

William Halliday 29:34

that someone has seen a beluga somewhere and all eyes turn on the water. Thankfully, our workers don't abandon us to go hunt a beluga, but they are looking and they, they know that. You know, if we're at our cabin at our field camp, they know that their relatives are just up the coast looking for belugas, and that's probably who they've heard from, that there are belugas in the area, and then just the, the feeling, the energy around camp changes, and everyone's busy, busy staring at the water, and then you see boats just going crazy, out looking, and it's just, it's amazing to me how the excitement and energy shifts in the area suddenly when they think that there's a beluga around. So, you Maybe not quite the story that you were hoping for, but

Meredith 30:16

No, that's that's great. I mean, I'd be. Very excited if I got to see a beluga. I've never seen one in the wild. I might try and get out to the St. Lawrence population soon, but my brother is up in Whitehorse. So I do need to make it up to the territories

William Halliday 30:32

have belugas in whitehorse.

Meredith 30:34

No, no, but it would be the closest place to jump off from. I suppose. Maybe head over to Alaska. Like you said, there's another relatively Southern out that way.

William Halliday 30:45

Yeah, although a very at risk population. So there aren't very many. Yeah, if you want to go see belugas, Churchill is probably the spot to go to. Tuktoyaktuk isn't bad, but you've got to get out. Like, they have a lot of belugas, but you have to get fairly far from the community. But there are some ecotour companies out there as well, which you can drive to from Whitehorse.

Meredith 31:04

Well, I was actually going to, maybe that's another great question is, is ecotourism for seeing belugas and whales? I'm assuming it's not just belugas they're looking for. Are they pretty respectful? Are they helpful to your research? Are they your research or are they kind of net neutral? Okay.

William Halliday 31:42

for and, and actually you can kayak and you can paddleboard out to look for belugas. And I have some colleagues who have been studying the impact of that industry on belugas, and it seems as if it's fairly neutral. So the belugas don't seem to be showing any sort of huge negative response. In fact, they seek out the boats often. They go and they, they play in the wake behind the, the motors. And but if you compare that to, so belugas aren't, aren't really hunted around Churchill. Whereas pretty much every other community in the Canadian Arctic, they are. And so that tourism industry works really well because those belugas haven't really learned to fear humans. You go to other populations and that's not really the case. They don't want to get close to small boats because they know that when there's a small boat, they're going to get hunted. So, yeah, I, I would say that those types of ecotourism, small boats coming out from a community are generally Neutral. I would call them. They don't seem to be incredibly. I haven't heard anything negative about those.

Meredith 32:46

and start

William Halliday 32:47

that are called eco tourism, though, and that would be specifically big cruise ships that are

Meredith 32:52

ahead and

William Halliday 32:53

calling themselves equal ecologically friendly and that sort of thing,

Meredith 32:57

us

William Halliday 32:58

are not very,

Meredith 32:59

I

William Halliday 33:00

Positive or neutral. They are very much so on the negative. They're one of the big contributors to underwater noise. They go areas where no other ships are going and cause disturbance in areas that are otherwise untouched. They send out, you know, zodiacs at all times to go out and look at the at the animals and everything. So different scale, different areas. But yeah, not all ecotourism is. Neutral or even positive. Some are definitely negative.

Meredith 33:29

So do your research if you want to go see these incredible animals and make sure you're choosing one that's bit more ethical, though it sounds like Churchill is a great place to go if they're going to play in your wake. And I mean, even paddle boarding would be very cool. So what's, belugas, very cool species. Do you have a favorite thing about them?

William Halliday 33:50

Honestly, I, and this is my own bias, but I just love listening to them. They're so varied in, in the sounds that they make. And so we can spend a lot of time. Like, I, I collect data year round from recorders at multiple sites. And so I spent a lot of time going through. And listening to data just to figure out what animals are present and anytime the belugas show up, I just have to stop and listen to them because they're so neat to listen to. They, you never quite know what sort of sounds are going to be making. Thankfully, we know what species it is because there's only 1 species of toothed whale in the area where I work. The seals and the bowhead whales don't really make the same sounds. Whistles and things like that, that it is going to be a beluga because there's just nothing else around that would make those sorts of sounds. And and yeah, that's, I think that's probably my favorite thing is just, especially when there's a big group of belugas that have come through and just all you can, all you can hear, all you can see, because we visualize the, the acoustic data when we're, we're going through it or just sounds from belugas. And that's it. That's all you can see. And, and that's just, that's just so fun to, to go through and, and listen to.

Meredith 35:06

If, if belugas were to have a superpower, do you think it would be attached to their vocalizations or in that realm? Or would it be? Something completely different.

William Halliday 35:16

Oh, it's, oh, well, I don't know. I like the show Daredevil a lot. And and you know, he's blind and, and he uses his hearing a lot. And to me, that's, that's a beluga in the dark, dark ocean environment where there's no, especially when they're diving deep. They are relying completely on their, on their hearing and on their, their echolocation. So I think that's probably the superpower of of belugas for sure.

Meredith 35:40

I like that daredevil, not a great movie, but a great TV show.

William Halliday 35:46

I was definitely referring to the tv show

Meredith 35:49

obviously you're very passionate about belugas. Do you find there to be challenge or a conflict between balancing like the scientific research with conservation efforts, or do you find they work really well, like hand in hand?

William Halliday 36:03

They they work very well hand in hand actually and so Yeah, because I do conservation research and and I'm working in an area where the people care very deeply about the animals that I'm working with, it's very easy to do research that makes us feel good in the end of the day and and research that is is making a difference. And so learning more about the species, learning more about how it's being impacted and then knowing that there are people that are deeply invested in this species and actually want to do it. The positive change for them is, is very rewarding. So. It's a

Meredith 36:38

did you have an aha moment or like, how did you end up in this line of work? Cause it's not exactly the most common career on career day in school. So how did you end up where you are now?

William Halliday 36:52

kind of a yeah, not a straight line.

Meredith 36:54

Transcripts

William Halliday 36:57

out on a fishing trip with my parents and some government biologists. I think they're actually from the states, but they came to the same fishing lodge that we were at. And and I just heard about they get to go fishing all day every day. And that just sounded like an amazing thing to do. And and so I started looking into, you know, what does it mean to be a biologist? And how can I do that for a living? And And so I started pursuing that for my education at the time. And then, and then I learned more about research and got into a research lab and it just kind of took off. I didn't actually end up starting doing marine work until after I finished my PhD. And so before then I was doing terrestrial work. I, I worked in the Arctic actually for four years on lemmings small rodents that run around the tundra but not, not on marine species. I did, I got to see some belugas and. Bowhead and seals when I was doing the lemming work just because of where we were, but never got the chance to work on them. And honestly, I was just looking for a job after my Ph. D. And my current role came up. And so I applied for it. For some reason, they decided that someone with no marine experience would be a good fit and kind of the rest of history. But I've always had a passion for kind of conservation type work just because, you know, even from the Growing up hunting and fishing with my family, conservation is actually very linked to those things because you can't continue hunting and fishing if the animals all go extinct. And so those, those things, even though they kind of seem counterintuitive sometime you know, you're fishing, you're, you're eating something from the environment. How can you care about conservation? Well, they, they actually do line up very well. And that mentality fits very well with the. The people that I work with up north, the indigenous people who have the same mentality effectively of like, this is, this is our livelihood. This is our subsistence. Yes, and we have to take care of it for future generations. And, and that very much matches up with, with part of my worldview growing up hunting and fishing. And so. Yeah, I think it was kind of a combination of those things that kind of led me to where I am now, but I'm very happy doing what I'm doing right now.

Meredith 38:58

Very cool. And I mean, you brought up lemmings, this isn't a lemming episode, but is it true that lemmings don't follow each other off of cliffs? And it was film crew that like drove that behavior. And that's the one thing people know about lemmings, but it's totally inaccurate.

William Halliday 39:17

Oh, yes, and that is the conversation I always have with people about lemmings, because most people don't actually know this. They, they, they think that lemmings commit mass suicide, and then I lead them to a certain documentary about By Walt Disney called the Great White North. And and then there's some very interesting footage and and a counter documentary effectively on what actually happened. And it was, I can't remember what community it might have in Cambridge Bay. So the filmmakers hired kids in an Arctic community to go catch them some lemmings. They then shipped those lemmings down to Edmonton. And they filmed it looking out over the Athabasca River so they, they built a lemming catapult, effectively, that launched the lemmings, it goes around, they, they put their lemming on it and launch it, so they've got the camera facing out with the catapult behind it, and you just see lemmings flying over the cliff sort of thing, and that was, for whatever reason, they decided that's how you explain population cycles, is with mass suicide but, no, I could, I could go on forever about that, I don't know.

Meredith 40:20

Okay, well, maybe you'll have to send me some links so that people can watch this counter documentary and we can get the, the story changed, but

William Halliday 40:30

There's a great snope article on it.

Meredith 40:32

Okay. Yeah, please. Please. And before we wrap this up. Back to belugas how can people who, you know, aren't up in the Arctic beluga populations? Are there things that people can do to support this species?

William Halliday 40:48

Yeah, so, you know, thinking about what those threats are to belugas, we've got climate change. Climate change is the big 1, but climate change is also the 1 that's like this. Big innocuous thing and how do you deal with something that's already. Like, if we all stopped our carbon emissions right now, changes that are happening in the Arctic would continue to happen just because of the momentum that's behind it at the moment. But. You know, things like lowering your carbon footprint actually might help the magnitude of those changes, because if we can slow down climate change a bit, that still is going to have positive impacts on the Arctic, even, even if we're going to continue to lose sea ice you know, that that's kind of already set in motion, but how big the losses and whether or not it can come back afterwards is another thing. So. There's that side of things. Then there's the underwater noise side, and actually, I think this is the part that people can have a lot more say over, and that is like, there's, there's a couple of things. One,

Meredith 41:46

sorry.

William Halliday 41:53

having people make ethical choices about what ecotourism options they decide to do. Is important and and could affect change. They're trying to hold those cruise ships to higher ethical standards in terms of where they go and what they do. Another big cause and increase in ship traffic in the Arctic is industry, and so it kind of comes down to consumerism. So we as a population want more and more and more. And that means that we need to get more and more and more materials. And so that leads to things like new minds opening up and new ships coming into to deal with those minds. So that's potentially Yeah, absolutely. You know, something that, you know, little individual changes can do the other is on the underwater noise part. So the government of Canada and other governments worldwide are starting to take action on underwater noise. But how much action they actually take probably will match up well with what voters think. And so having more. Public push to say that underwater noise is a real issue that affects these species that we care about might actually lead the government to doing things like making bigger policy changes such as requiring that ships add new technology that makes them quieter or policies around keeping noisy ships away from sensitive areas So those are things that you know If the voting population actually cares about underwater noise and actually makes a big stink about underwater noise, maybe the government might actually treat it even more seriously and deal with it a bit more.

Meredith 43:29

Timely message with multiple elections up across the country. So well timed advice and even just general good advice about. know, really considering your consumption and how that can affect not just the underwater noise and shipping and demands, but also your, your climate impact to yeah, we live in a, in a society that's very much more and more and more, but it doesn't necessarily need need to be and reflecting on that can actually be a way that you have a little bit of personal. Autonomy to, to fight some of these really big changes that seem beyond a personal scope.

William Halliday 44:06

Yeah.

Meredith 44:07

And I guess just to wrap this up, are there any success stories or what do you hope the future looks like for the beluga?

William Halliday 44:16

Yeah. So my favorite success story to talk about, and it's a work in progress, is so we noticed in a study of, oh, it was six years ago that it came out, but that ship traffic in the New Valley Settlement Region was going right through a new marine protected area. And the ships were also going through important habitats for bowhead and beluga whales. So we highlighted that and said, all right, here are some changes that maybe could happen to. Help fix that and. The fisheries and Oceans Canada. Someone from there saw the paper and said, Hey, this is a good idea. Why don't we see if we can do something about it? And they then worked with local new valid organizations and other government departments. And they came up with these voluntary management measures right now, which are to avoid the marine protected areas, ships to avoid marine protected areas and to travel slower when they're going through these important beluga and bowhead areas because slower ships are less likely to hit a whale, which Is more of an issue for bowheads than for belugas, but still could be an issue, but slower ships are also generally quieter ship. So they have less underwater noise coming from them. And so that's a management measure that potential has a lot of potential to be a success story for this population of belugas. It's voluntary. And so right now, I'm helping to track how ships are actually following it. And right now, the avoidance of marine protected areas is better than it was. And so that seems to be a positive. It could be better still, but it's going in the right direction. But the, the slowdowns in the whale areas seems to not be working at the moment because it's really large area and it's a voluntary measure. And, and so I think there's there's more work to do, but it's the start of a success success story anyways. And so hopefully that management measure keeps going and and get baby switches from voluntary to mandatory. That might help a bit with a bit of enforcement behind it, but but even still, it's going in the right direction. And I'd like to see things like that happen for other populations of belugas as well. And so, it's the start of something bigger, I hope, and, um, hopefully will be even more of a success story in 10 years.

Meredith 46:23

Perfect. We'll have to do a follow up episode then, but thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed this conversation.

William Halliday 46:31

It was great talking about belugas. So thank you.

Meredith 46:34

And that's a wrap on this episode with the beluga whale. And a massive thank you to William for taking the time to chat with us. And if you loved this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review. It helps Rarified reach more people who care about our planet's rarest creatures. And don't forget to follow us on Instagram at rarefied. pod, and sign up for our newsletter on our website for updates. Next time, we'll actually be going back to an episode I teased before, but due to technical difficulties wasn't able to be released. But now, it is official, we are having our first guests from south of the border to talk about one very cool insect, you won't want to miss it. So until next time, get out there and explore the wild because every species has a story and every one of us can make a difference. Thanks for listening and until next time, happy trails.