Karen Mackenzie
Northern News Services
Monday, July 9, 2007

IQALUIT - The next Nunavut bowhead whale hunt will take place in the summer of 2008, announced Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. (NTI) on June 21.

"The whale hunt is very important for the Inuit, since time immemorial, way back to pre-contact with the Europeans," said Gabriel Nirlungayuk, director of wildlife for NTI.

Inuit are entitled to hunt bowhead whales under the lands claim agreement.

The total allowable harvest (TAH) and frequency of the hunt is determined by the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board (NWMB) with recommendations from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO).

It is currently set at one bowhead every two or three years, according to NWMB chair Joe Tigullaraq.

Hall Beach is one of nine communities which have submitted expressions of interest for this hunt.

"We are Inuit. A long, long time ago we used to hunt bowhead with kayak and harpoon and nothing else - to hunt that big animal," said Enoki Irqittuq, chair of the Hall Beach Hunters and Trappers Association. "There was no metal, there was no rifle or knife. They used only bones and stones. They made kayaks out of sealskin, out of wood, if they could get it, or bone."

The hunt "would help our community. Not only help Hall Beach, but communities nearby," he said. "But we will support whoever gets the quota, just because it’s taking place here."

NTI declined to release the full list of interested communities.

An executive made up of the chairs and co-chairs of regional wildlife boards will look at the hunt plans submitted by the applicants before choosing where the 2008 hunt will be held.

Bowhead harvesting workshops for interested hunter and trappers organizations will take place this fall, according to an NTI release.

In 2005, Repulse Bay was chosen to take part in the first hunt since the creation of Nunavut.

"(They had) a good hunt plan, they wanted to use efficient weapons and had a long history of whaling in their community," Nirlungayuk said.

The next hunt will likely not take place in the Kivalliq region, as the decision-making committee would like to see it rotated throughout the different regions, according to Tigullaraq.

The bowhead whale, which can grow up to 20 metres in length, was listed as an endangered species by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC) in the early 1980s.

"After the over-hunting by Europeans going back hundreds of year, because of their commercial value, they were almost hunted to extinction," Nirlungayuk said. "But it has made a big comeback over the years. Even though it is not as vital as it used to be, it is still (improving)."

The number of bowhead whales in the waters around Nunavut is officially considered to be around 7,000, but that number could range from 3,000 to 16,000, according to DFO research biologist Larry Dueck.

This variance is due to the way research is conducted, he said. Aerial counts of the whales between 2002 and 2004 were limited to a small area due to logistical challenges, and only a small percentage of the whales are actually visible.

"Bowhead whales spend 75 per cent of their time underwater below a depth that would be visible," he said.

The numbers are corrected accordingly, and quota recommendations to the NWMB are based on these and the estimated rate of population growth, while taking into account that the species is currently at risk, according to Dueck.

The bowhead whales in the eastern Arctic are shared with Greenland, which will soon begin conducting hunts of its own of up to two bowheads a year, according to Dueck.