Belugas’ bloody history

IQALUIT — Feast or famine: that’s the way the beluga hunt has gone for the past 300 years.

If beluga stocks truly number as few as 1,000 in the eastern Hudson Bay and 200 in Ungava Bay, these populations may be at a dangerously low point.

But even though beluga seem few and far between these days, it wasn’t always so.

Hunted by whalers, by the Hudson Bay Company’s fishing fleet, and continuously by Inuit, beluga populations have gone boom and bust for longer than anyone can now recall.

And, depending on the health of their numbers, beluga have caused elation or tension among those eager for the hunt.

In 1852 a Quebec whaler called Edward Bélanger told his bosses at the HBC that there were literally thousands of “white whales” at the Little and Great Whale Rivers and along the Nastapoka River. His positive reports sparked a wholesale slaughter of whales.

In 1854, 423 beluga were caught. Those numbers rose to 743 in 1856 and 1,043 in 1857.

By 1860, the hunt took 1,500 beluga in Little Whale River and 800 in Great Whale River.

The total catch over a seven-year period was an astounding 4,509 animals.

But then the beluga hunt crashed as the whales stopped entering the rivers.

In 1868, George McTavish, who was in charge of the Little Whale River post, decided not to bring any trade goods to Great Whale River because he believed boat noise was scaring the beluga away.

But the use of guns, instead of harpoons, may have been the main contributor to the stock’s decline, as many more beluga were shot than ever before, and more were shot than retrieved.

With the numbers of beluga along the eastern Hudson Bay steadily dropping, the HBC turned its sights on beluga in Ungava Bay.

The fishery at Fort Chimo recorded a catch of 85 to 90 beluga every year during the 1880s. Although 160 were taken in 1889, the fishery failed in 1904 because there were no more beluga to catch.

And, as beluga became increasingly scarce, tensions between Inuit and whalers grew.

At Kuuvik, near Richmond Gulf, legend has it that whalers terrorized Inuit women until they promised to sew them mittens.

But the women made mittens that lacked thumbs, so that when the Inuit moved to steal their guns, the whalers were unable to stop them.

Another story says Inuit killed the captain and crew of a wrecked ship because they had taken women — or, in another version of the same story, because they had overkilled local wildlife.

In 1903 the RCMP recommended that whaling be stopped so stocks could recover, but whaling continued at Leaf Bay near Tasiujaq and along the Hudson Strait.

Large beluga kills were still recorded in Nunavik until relatively recently.

In 1948, 128 animals were killed in Puvirnituq. In 1956, 78 beluga were taken in Quaqtaq, and in the 1960s, 103 belugas were killed in Puvirnituq.

The 193 Inuit living in Great Whale River (now Kuujjuaraapik) took 32 beluga in 1954 and up to 55 in 1959.

In 1960s an economic survey said annual harvests ranged from 50 to 76 beluga for Ungava Bay, and as many as 144 for eastern Hudson Bay.

Until the late 1970s, Nunavimmiut still killed an average of 522 beluga every year, nearly double the number caught over the past few years.