A pair of conservation officers in Churchill are sharing a once-in-a-lifetime story after they helped protect a small pod of beluga whales stuck in shallow water. On July 20, Vitalii Skrynnyk and Owen Jones received a call around 7:20 a.m. about a possible polar bear sighting along the shore within the town. The caller wasn’t sure exactly what it was but noted there was something big and white in the water. Jones was dispatched to the area, and when he got there, it wasn’t a bear that he found; it was belugas. “I found a pod of beluga whales stuck in a tidal pool,” said Jones. “Birds pecking at them, circling them in the air and it was clear that they had been pecking at the belugas for quite some time, which was evident through the amount of blood that I saw on the back of the larger adults. They were in distress.” The tide had receded, leaving about a foot or so of water in the area and trapping the belugas. In total, there were three adults and four calves stranded. Jones said he immediately called Skrynnyk and used bear bangers to scare away the birds long enough so a plan could be worked out on what to do. Skrynnyk said he called RCMP for help as well as to provide protection in case a polar bear were to show up. “We know that belugas are part of the diet for polar bears. They never miss a chance to feed on beluga whales,” said Skrynnyk. After devising a plan, Skrynnyk went in the water to check the condition of the belugas. He quickly determined that each whale was OK, despite some small artificial cuts, but none were dealing with any critical injuries. “My next concern was making sure that the breathing holes for each and every animal is not blocked,” he said. “I did observe two calves were laying on a side and not on their belly.” With the help of the water, Skrynnyk was able to flip the smaller whales onto their bellies. He said each calf weighed around 150 to 200 pounds and were roughly one and a half metres long. The adult whales remained calm during the entire ordeal, but the calves were stressed, said Skrynnyk. While everything was under control, the officers still had to wait a couple of hours before the tide was back to allow the whales to get to deeper water. Skrynnyk would go back in every 20 or 30 minutes to splash water on the belugas and flip over the calves a few more times. Eventually, the water came in enough to allow the whales to get back to the bay. “We had been monitoring the whales for quite some time at this point, and it was kind of like light at the end of the tunnel,” said Jones. Being able to watch them swim off back to safety, Jones said it was an amazing experience. “It was really cool for the last 20 minutes watching the water get higher and higher, and it was just building a big suspense because we knew at some point we were going to be able to watch these whales swim away once the water was high enough.” The two officers are fairly new to the area, as Jones has been up there for almost a month and Skrynnyk is in his second month. This is something that neither of them have experienced before. “A lot of this is new to us, but we’re being forced to learn very quickly and that’s a good thing,” said Jones. “Touching them and being right beside them and listening to how they communicate, like verbally and non-verbally, it’s a lifetime event for sure. Now I know if I’m gonna be asked by officers, ‘What was your best story during the line of duty?’ Like 100 per cent, it’s the whales,” said Skrynnyk. Emma Ausen, a science coordinator for the Churchill Marine Observatory, said she has never heard of anything like this happening before in Churchill. “This is a pretty rare occurrence. It’s very interesting that something like that would happen,” said Ausen. She said it’s hard to know why the belugas ended up closer to shore, as it could have been anything from trying to escape predators to using the rocks to rub off their seasonal moult. She also can’t rule out climate change playing a role in the incident. “Belugas are matrilineal, so mothers will teach the calves where to go and what’s safe in the areas that they’ve been visiting for many, many years. So if there are changes to the environment, there’s more of a risk for strandings or other occurrences like this.” There are roughly 55,000 beluga whales that call the western Hudson Bay home. - With files from CTV News’ Alex Karpa
