Hudson Bay NESSIE Revealed

 Bill Ayotte picked me up a half hour early on August 22 but that was OK, there is always lots to do so we got in the truck and headed for the dock.  About half way there we met Wally Daudrich, owner of the Lazy Bear Lodge and Tours, who stopped us by blinking his lights.  He told us that someone from Cape Merry had just reported seeing Orcas and explained that he was just getting back from checking it out without any luck. 

 I asked Bill if he’d mind going back to my place to pick up my camera equipment.  I’ve been a photographer for 25 years or more, co-owner of Sea North Tours for over 30 years, a company specializing in beluga whale watching and also a resident of Churchill for 40 years, having spent a large percentage of that time on the water.  I’ve seen two bowhead whales and close to a million belugas, but never an Orca.  Every year rumors of black fin sightings travel through the small community.   For example one Churchill visitor claimed to have witnessed something amazing.  The previous evening about 10 PM she saw a big pod of belugas in the river.  Next a whale with a black fin showed up and then more black fined whales arrived and swam with the belugas.  She said the belugas then started to come up out of the water.   This sounded like mating behavior to me.  10:00 PM would have put the sun low on the other side of the river, sun sets about 11:30 or so in July.  All fins and whales appear black under these conditions and although belugas have no dorsal fins, when they swim on their sides near the surface a fluke presents itself as a shark like fin.  During courting and mating belugas swim in close quarters, on their sides, upside down, heads and pectoral fins bobbing out of the water as well as other things.  We’ve had a few “X” rated beluga tours in July.

 I knew there were killer whales in Hudson Bay from reliable sources such as Inuit coastal travelers.  Morris Spence and several Port of Churchill workers saw seven Orcas come into the Churchill River in September of 2005, which along with other reported sightings sparked the interest of Fisheries and Oceans.  Elly Chemelnitsky from the University of Manitoba was assigned the task of researching Hudson Bay Orcas.  They wanted to know if Orca could be found here and if so their habits and numbers, which means developing a photo ID data bank.  Churchill along with other Hudson Bay coastal communities were flooded with forms showing pictures of Orcas, asking people to supply identifiable features, markings and behavior as well as location information.  Elly placed hydrophones connected to high-end digital sound recording equipment at strategic stations located along the coast but no Orca sounds were collected.  Early this summer Elly told me that her hopes were high since she had a reported sighting from a Nunavut woman who had a picture.  I interrupted and said, “It was a sasquatch picture wasn’t it?”  She smiled and said yes, the picture was blurry and at the top of the frame so the dorsal fin was cut off; it looked like a backlit beluga to me.  You could tell that as a scientist Elly was starting to think that Hudson Bay killer whales were like the Lock Ness Nessie and that she may never come up with any real proof of their existence.

 Bill and I arrived at the Sea North marina to find the stern of the zodiacs already floating so we grabbed our floater coats, checked the fuel and left with Bill at the tiller.  Bill Ayotte, a retired foreman from the town water treatment plant, is one of Churchill’s most experience coastal travelers.  Born the son of a trapper, his father Reg moved to Churchill from Padlei in 1947 when fur prices dropped.  As we moved down river towards the mouth we noticed belugas concentrated in shallow water, everyday stuff for most of July and early August, but it was August 22 and at this time of year about half of the two to three thousand white whales have left with most of the remaining whales moving from the river and feeding out the mouth.  We also saw a large bearded seal, about 800 pounds, locally known as a square flipper.  I asked Bill if he had ever seen an Orca and he said no; I explained they should be easy to spot; they have dorsal fins this high, holding my hand about four feet off the deck of the zodiac.  As we left the mouth the waves started to get a little bigger and I kept scanning the horizon in all directions.  Bill said, “look behind me, I can’t see back there”, a good plan which about doubled our chances of seeing a sudden spout.  We kept moving north out into Hudson Bay and a few minutes later Bill calmly said, “I saw something, it looked like spouts and fins”.  Bill increased the speed, and I still hadn’t seen anything.  We kept traveling north for several minutes at about 30 km/hour and my back felt like chips of bone moving in my vertebrae every time the inflated fabric boat dropped out from under me and hit about a 12 inch chop, but I didn’t say anything to Bill who was riding more comfortably at the stern, for fear he might slow down.  Starring at the horizon ahead and trying to keep my eyes focused while pounding the waves I started to have my doubts about Bill’s eyesight, he wears some pretty serious glasses, and they were probably covered with a salt film.  But suddenly there they were, about four hundred meters ahead, blowing high pressure spouts of water, some about 20 feet high which dissipated into a fine mist, in sequence one after another.  I yelled to Bill but couldn’t take my hand off the side ropes to point, I needed to hang on.  Bill asked, “Am I going the right way?” “Right at them” I answered.  I was yelling, “Holy crap look at that” and Bill had spotted them again.  Dorsal fins were tough to see heading straight away from us, water sheeting off them reflected the sea and sky.  Then they disappeared.  Bill altered course so we weren’t headed straight at the pod and we kept moving at the same speed hoping to parallel them.  A couple of minutes went by, suddenly they were there again, behind us.  I started yelling, “Stop, stop, I need to get a picture”.  Bill turned the boat and slowed down.  I dove on my pelican case; grabbed one of my Nikons with a 70 – 200 stabilized lens attached and started shooting.  They were moving straight at the boat for a minute but stopped about 75 yards away as though having a meeting about what they should do with us.  Bill counted seven animals.  One of the two largest dorsal fins stood eight to nine feet tall; some lifted their heads above the water, likely to look us over.  Next they dove, leaving the surface covered with swirls from the torque of their flukes and then they were gone.  We sat drifting for a few minutes and as we searched I mentioned that those are the largest predators on earth.  Bill joked, “Hope they aren’t hungry!” I marked our position on my GPS for Elly (about 6 kilometers off shore) and we headed back in time for our tours.

 Orcas would likely not be very productive if they remained in the estuaries, although these areas are brimming with three species of seals and thousands of belugas.  Killer whales are sound dependent and like all whale species they must echolocate to navigate, which is their equivalent to our eyesight.  These sounds travel for many kilometers warning their prey.  Belugas would take refuge in the abundant four to six foot shallows surrounding the estuary.  A hit and run tactic would likely be more successful; arrive in late August and early September when the belugas are in deep water, heading out across Hudson Bay towards their winter staging in the Hudson Straits.  Belugas cruise at a leisurely six km/hour and are capable of about 20 km/hour for shorter distances.  The Orcas we visited were traveling at about 26 km/hour and are capable of 48 km/hour.  There would be no out swimming them in deeper water.  One local boater reported seeing a polar bear swimming to shore with a slab of beluga blubber in its mouth, apparently killer whales are sloppy eaters.