ARCTIC DRAMA
A bittersweet harvest from a misfortune of nature
The first sign of trouble came when hunters crossing the sea ice outside of Pond Inlet, high on Baffin Island's northeast coast, saw polar bears feasting on dead narwhals.
But it wasn't until the hunters got close to the blood-stained carcasses of the white whales that they saw the enormity of the disaster.
Some 500 whales were trapped in the ice, about 50 kilometres from the open ocean, repeatedly surfacing at a handful of small, air holes that were rapidly freezing shut.
Since that discovery last week, people from the hamlet of Pond Inlet have killed an estimated 300 whales by shooting them as they surface, quickly harpooning them and dragging them onto the ice.
The whales that remain alive, perhaps as many as 200, will be killed in the next few days as the community of Pond Inlet moves to harvest animals that otherwise would die of starvation or drowning.
"A bunch of narwhal got caught inside by the annual freeze-up, before they could escape to open water," Keith Pelley, area director for the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Nunavut, said yesterday.
"They've been keeping breathing holes open, but the ice is freezing up and eventually all these whales will drown," Mr. Pelley added.
"The harvest right now is a little over 300 and the estimate is more than 200 more still using the breathing holes."
He said DFO has approved the harvest because otherwise the whales would just sink to the bottom of the ocean after dying from starvation.
Mr. Pelley said the closest coast guard icebreaker is about seven days away and even if it made the trip it likely couldn't save the whales.
"Narwhal have a tendency to scare easily with engine noise and, more than likely, if a boat came close, they would probably swim farther up under the ice and not be able to get back to their breathing holes. They would drown sooner," he said.
Mr. Pelley said it's not uncommon for whales to get trapped by the ice in the Arctic but it is rare for such a large group to be stranded.
Mike Richards, special administrative officer for Pond Inlet, said nearly every household in the community of 1,000 people now has some whale meat, or muktuk, a traditional food for the Inuit.
"Most of the town has been out and harvested some," he said. "Local people are saying it's unfortunate. They feel sorry for the whales, but they know they are going to die anyway so they should harvest them.
"It's a feast for the community and there will be a lot of young hungry Inuit who are going to be well fed for the next few weeks."
Mr. Richards said "it doesn't matter which house you walk into, there's muktuk on the kitchen floor. Pretty well every house that has muktuk is eating it right now. They'll get through the Christmas season [on it] and it will be frozen and last until spring."
He said the place where the whales are trapped is a little over an hour across the ice by snowmobile. Most of the whales are cut up on the ice and the meat is hauled back to the community on sleds.
"A few people have brought back the whole carcasses. I know the school went out and brought one back. They are doing a thing in the classroom."
Mr. Richards said it might sound like needless slaughter, but people see it as a sensible way to make the best of a bad situation.
"It's just a misfortune of nature." Mr. Richards said one hunter told him they had pulled 11 dead baby narwhals out of the air holes. The whales that have been harvested don't have much fat, an early sign of starvation.
Joseph Maktar of the Pond Inlet Hunters and Trappers Association said something like this happened once before.
"Based on our hunters' knowledge there were trapped whales in 1943. And [the community] harvested them until they were all gone," he said.
Mr. Maktar said that during the summer and fall narwhal are hunted from boats. But usually by the end of September, the whales have migrated out of Eclipse Sound and are far beyond the reach of local hunters.
"We can blame it on global warming," he said of the current situation.
Mr. Maktar said the ice pan formed late this year, toward the end of October, and the whales stayed in Eclipse Sound too long. When the ice formed, it came in fast and suddenly closed off all exits, trapping the whales.
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