Maria Canton
Northern News Services

Coral Harbour (Aug 23/00) - The weather may not have been ideal, but harvesting a 35-tonne bowhead whale was a success.

Both the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board said they are pleased with the bowhead head whale hunt that ended Aug. 11.

"Everything went according to plan and the first reports say it went extremely well," said Burt Hunt, DFO's director for the Eastern Arctic area.

"The worst thing about it was probably the conditions, which were wet and cold."

Whalers and observers were held up at the Leyson Point camp, about 90 kilometres from Coral Harbour, until mid-week last week. They had to wait for the weather to lift so they could head back to town and celebrate their catch.

"The whale is completely butchered and packaged for transporting back to town and then the distribution of the muktaaq and meat will happen."

More than 100 people were at the camp last Friday when hunters landed a 12- metre, young male from the Northern Hudson Bay-Foxe Basin population.

That particular population was chosen after a recommendation from DFO suggested that it could withstand the stress of losing one whale.

At 9:40 a.m. on Aug. 11, someone at the spotting station radioed the hunters that they had seen a whale.

Three boats and 14 people were then dispatched and at 11:45 a.m., after three shots with exploding harpoons, the whale was secured and towed back to the camp, where it was butchered.

The NWMB congratulated the Coral Harbour hunt planning committee and the community of Coral Harbour on a successful hunt.

Approval of the hunt plan was given by the NWMB.

The meat and muktaaq are now being stored in a community freezer in Coral Harbour before territory-wide distribution takes place.