Lynn Lau
Northern News Services

Tuktoyaktuk (July 22/02) - A surprise appearance of belugas about 60 kilometres up-river marked the beginning of the Mackenzie Delta whaling season.

Federal fisheries biologist Lois Harwood says someone reported a sighting of belugas earlier this month at Swimming Point on the East Channel between Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk.

For whales to travel this far upstream is unusual, but nothing to be alarmed about, Harwood says.

"The whales have come as far down the Mackenzie as Swimming Point in 1980, and there were a few harvested in Aklavik in 2000," Harwood says. Belugas apparently don't mind a little fresh water when they're tailing good food, like schools of arctic cisco (herring) and inconnu currently running in the Delta.

Anyone who sees the belugas in the river is asked to report sightings to the department. "We'd be curious if they're moving farther up river or if they're going back down again," Harwood says.

Meanwhile, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans and the Inuvialuit Fisheries Joint Management Committee have started whale monitoring efforts.

Monitors working out of eight whaling camps are taking measurements and samples of whales as hunters bring them in.

At six of the camps, monitors will count, measure and sex the harvested whales. They'll also take a jaw bone from each animal, which is used to estimate age. At two camps -- Baby Island (off Kendall Island) and Hendrickson Island, DFO staff are taking tissue samples to test for reproductive status, disease and contaminants.

Hunters in Tuktoyaktuk took about five whales over the Canada Day long weekend, Harwood says. Each year, about 110 belugas are harvested by the Inuvialuit communities of Aklavik, Inuvik, Tuktoyaktuk and Paulatuk. The size of the Beaufort beluga population is estimated at somewhere between 36,000 and 70,000 whales.