Kerry McCluskey
Northern News Services

NNSL (Jun 29/98) - Reporters will be allowed to observe next month's bowhead whale hunt in Cumberland sound after all, according to officials planning the hunt.

"The captain indicated that he doesn't want or has never wanted to change the participation rule about having media people within the two-mile limit," said Pangnirtung's Hunters and Trappers Association manager Eric Joamie, interpreting for hunt captain Jaco Evic.

Early on in the planning, the committee decided to restrict media to a distance of two nautical miles from boats, but after examining the legalities at the prodding of the CBC, the Qikitaaluk Wildlife Board revoked its ruling.

"The committee reconsidered banning the media and now the committee decided the media will be allowed," says Joanasie Akumalik, the executive director of the board.

This doesn't mean however, that it's going to be smooth sailing for journalists. They'll either have to use their own boats in the Cumberland Sound or ride in a designated vessel and pay their share of costs.

Media will also be limited from getting too close to the hunting crews by a Department of Fisheries and Oceans' boat and two patrol boats, which are responsible for securing the area and keeping stray craft from interfering with the hunt.

"It's for the safety of whoever might be trying to be a nuisance," said Evic.

The patrol boats will also try to ensure that the hunt itself is contained and that mistakes made in Repulse Bay's 1996 bowhead hunt are not be repeated.

"We've been very vocal about trying to contain the hunt so the whale can be caught as humanely and efficiently as possible," says Evic.

With media or without, the hunt will begin sooner than planned -- likely during the first three weeks of July -- because of an early breakup of the Sound.

All told, the cultural expedition will cost up to $80,000 and the hunt will use six vessels and 24 men, eight of which comprise the primary hunting crew.

Evic, who was chosen to lead the hunt because of his participation in the Hudson Bay Company's last hunt in Pangnirtung in 1943, says he is honoured to be respected in his community as a hunter and a whaler.

"I want to make sure that the next generation is educated in every way possible to understand this is part of our culture and it is our right to harvest a bowhead."