Sea Ghosts

The longest-established scuba diving magazine in North America

November 2007

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INNER & OUTER SPACE

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HOT HAWAIIAN ISLANDS

AQUANAUT-to-ASTRONAUT

ARABIA: DYING TO DIVE

SEA GHOSTS

SIREN of the SEA

FUTURE OCEANS

Sea Ghosts

BY JEAN-MICHEL COUSTEAU

The Ocean Futures Society expedition team traveled high in the remote Canadian Arctic to Pangnirtung, where this walrus was photographed in the slushy water of the region’s brief summer season. Photo: Carrie Vonderhaar - Ocean Futures Society

With Return to the Amazon in post-production, Ocean Futures Society is on to its next film project far from the heat and rain of Brazil’s tropical rainforests.

The OFS expedition team (aka the X team) is traveling frigid waters this time, from storm-tossed Alaskan seas to the industrialized St. Lawrence Estuary in eastern Canada. Our mission is to learn more about the significance of belugas and their environmental connection to humans worldwide.

The team is also searching to discover why these two genetically distinct beluga populations, in Alaska’s Cook Inlet and the St. Lawrence Estuary, are on different paths: to extinction in one region and slowly rebounding from the brink of oblivion in the other. The high definition film footage we shoot will be used in a new documentary called Sea Ghosts. This film and Return to the Amazon are part of the second season line-up of our award-winning TV specials aired internationally as Jean-Michel Cousteau Ocean Adventures, co-produced

by Ocean Futures Society and PBS affiliate KQED in San Francisco.

Veritable apparitions in the ocean, beluga whales are nonetheless among the most beloved of marine mammals…and among the most threatened in the world. Named after the Russian word ‘bielo,’ meaning white, these ghost-like whales that forever appear to be smiling, inhabit the ocean around the Arctic and are seen in the wild by very few people. Early explorers nicknamed belugas ‘sea canaries’ because their varied vocalizations sound like birdsongs. Perhaps the analogy 10

DIVER Magazine

is appropriate. Can they be likened to the canaries sent into coalmines to warn of danger? Are they harbingers of the ocean’s health?

Sea Ghosts will take an intimate look at the relationships between people and beluga populations around the North American Arctic and sub Arctic. In this regard the people who live and work most closely with this charismatic whale species are a critical source of knowledge.

From them the OFS X team and TV viewers alike will gain greater understanding of the environmental changes – natural and manmade – that may impact belugas and other Arctic and sub Arctic wildlife.

Through our documentary investigation of these relationships, stories both ominous and optimistic will be told. We will spotlight dire threats to beluga conservation. We will consider toxic bio-magnification stress, subsistence dependence, population management, the current state of beluga research and what these whales can tell us about a changing Arctic environment. A major goal of the program is to shed light on the importance of healthy beluga populations and how they impact humankind.

Not all that is known about belugas is bad news. In fact, some populations are healthy, allowing for sustainable harvesting in subsistence communities. We intend to look at these healthy populations and how local communities have taken action to guard against their decline.

FUTURE OCEANS

Chief Diver Blair Mott takes a break atop the only iceberg the team could find on a warm summer day. The team was filming 15 miles (24km) Northeast of Point Lay, Alaska, in the Chukchi Sea. Blair holds a prototype fin designed exclusively for OFS by Force Fin founder Bob Evans. Photo: Aron Bosworth - Ocean Futures Society

Regions of particular interest to us for this film include the Alaskan communities of Cook Inlet, Point Lay and Bristol Bay. In Canada, our location shooting will be along the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, Pangnirtung on southeast Baffin Island and at Cunningham Inlet on Somerset Island. At time of writing the OFS X team is onsite learning about the belugas inhabiting these areas and their relationship with Arctic peoples. Most of us know these whales from print and broadcast media only or from visits to aquaria. Typically, the perception is of animated, gregarious marine mammals that are fun to observe. In filming Sea Ghosts, the OFS X team will endeavour to show viewers the important role belugas play in the ocean and in the lives of humans – and it’s considerably more than most of us realize. Given their circumpolar distribution and high place on the food chain, belugas can serve as indicator species on a holistic scale. Their response to environmental change in the Arctic provides important field data to researchers about the condition, healthy or otherwise, of this northern marine ecosystem. As well, these animals are a food source for many Arctic and sub-Arctic indigenous people and an economic engine in the region’s eco-tourism industry.

The OFS X team is digging deep into the story of wild belugas to show just how significant these white whales truly are in helping us understand our natural world – its health and biodiversity – in times of environmental change. As we film these beautiful animals we are being reminded not just of our vital connection and dependence on a healthy Arctic environment but on the health of Planet Earth as a whole.

Everything is connected. What happens in the Arctic affects us all. You know my mantra: Protect the ocean and you protect yourself.

The OFS expedition team spent most of this summer filming two different populations of beluga whales at several sites including Somerset Island, Nunavut, Canada, where this image was taken. Photo: Carrie Vonderhaar - Ocean Futures Society BELOW: A beluga cow and calf swim in the Cunningham River Estuary. For a few weeks in July and August, belugas gather in the bay’s warmer shallow water, which serves as a nursery for young whales. They also rub their bodies on the cobblestone substrate, an aid in sloughing off dead skin. Photo: Carrie Vonderhaar - Ocean Futures Society

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