Whale Nation: Each of Them a Lesson, Each of Them a Wonder

I’m not sure what woke me – the cold penetrating my sleeping bag or the first impressions of dawn, the internal alarm of the wildlife photographer – but I remember very clearly that it was 5:34 am, on Friday, August 27^th.

Beyond my tent flap flowed the St Lawrence Estuary, as glassy and calm as a mountaintop lake, the horizon a violent orange and the sun tucked just behind the hills of the southern shore. The smooth sheets of stone between me and water were dry and ghostly grey, and all was absolutely still and very cold. There’s no other word for it – idyllic.

Then came the sobering shock of an indefinite mass of black breaking the surface of the water, gigantic, tearing open the St Lawrence with a terrible, gushing roar. Not until it vanished did I register the long, level forehead, the raised upper jaw, and the high, boisterous nostrils of the baleen whale, two of them, rising side by side with mouths agape only metres from shore, herding before them an invisible swarm of zooplankton.

They rose again a little farther on, their anatomical details still shrouded in the waning dark. Minke whales, I guessed, the smallest of the rorquals yet twice the weight of an African bull elephant, or maybe these were humpbacks, pods of whom had swum by only the day previous. Fin whales were in these waters also, and Right, and Blue, and Sperm…

Quebec’s Estuary, North of Rivière-du-Loup

In few places on Earth have the forces of geology, hydrology and biology conspired more successfully to attract the whale nation. Here in the estuary, immediately north of Quebec’s Rivière-du-Loup, the tidal waters of the St Lawrence Gulf collide with the downstream tumble of the St Lawrence River, and they do so on tilted terrain. The estuary’s northeast is a sheer 300 metres (1000 feet) deep, so sheer, in fact, that whales could comfortably swim up to my tent. The estuary’s southwest, however, rises sharply to a depth of only 25 metres (82 feet).

From Phytoplankton to Dolphins and Whales

This underwater ramp, and the constant clashing of saltwater and fresh, forces frigid, nutrient dense water to the surface where its riches are exploited by photosynthetic phytoplankton in full view of the sun. Where phytoplankton blooms, there come the zooplankton, and where the zooplankton congregate, there come the fish, and where fish form schools, there come the seals and dolphins and birds. And wherever our oceans achieved such seasonal abundance as this, there come the whales.

Paradis Marin Campground, a Great Whale Viewing Ground

There is no better place to admire the workings of the estuary than Paradis Marin, a campground famous for its proximity to the water and whales of the northern shore. Every morning around sunrise, many dozens of its campers settle themselves on the rocks, with foldable chairs, blankets, cameras, binoculars, drinks and picnics, and they wait, quietly, for the next passage of the whales. Entire vacations can be spent on these rocks, reading or chatting or sunbathing, and it would not be a vacation wasted, because as sure as the sun will rise, the whales will come, and they will come close.

The day before my arrival to Paradis Marin, a parade of minke whales, numbering in the dozens, frolicked and fed immediately offshore, and during the countless hours I spent entranced by the black abyss ahead, rising and falling with the tide, I was dazzled by Humpbacks and Fins moving past in slow stampedes, gorging themselves on unseen bounties and spouting from lungs like canons.

Sometimes Humpbacks rolled on their sides to expose white underbellies and prodigious flukes, and more than once they raised their long, jagged fins to the sky and waved, a gesture so absurdly human you couldn’t help but laugh. Every appearance drew from the crowd an involuntary gasp or gleeful chant, and in the times between, silence reigned over the waiting masses.

Spotting the Beluga White Whale in Quebec

The steady hand of conservation came to this estuary in 1998, when a long strip of the northern shore and much of the Rivière Saguenay (adjoining the estuary from the west) became the Saguenay-St Lawrence Marine Park, placing thoughtful limitations on fisheries, shipping traffic and resource extraction throughout the region, a joint venture between the provincial of Quebec and federal government.

Even whale watching vessels, which broach the estuary specifically to find its leviathans, must follow a battery of rules governing minimum safe distances, maximum speeds, appropriate bearings and whatever else, all to reduce the risk to whales.

Actually, to one whale in particular, utterly unique in Atlantic Canada and a year-round resident of the estuary and Rivière Saguenay. In French and English, its name is the same – Beluga. They are the white whales, their porcelain skin entirely free of pigmentation, stark and unmistakable against the blacks and blues of the estuary.

Up to five metres (16 feet) long and as heavy as two tonnes, those of the St Lawrence are the most southerly belugas in the world. I’ve seen them, from Paradis Marin and the decks of ferries, breaking the surface like the coiled tentacles of medieval drolleries, or the arched backs of stupendous serpents, featureless and fleeting.

Belugas have swum here some 13,000 years, from the very instant, it seems, that glaciers retreated far enough north to produce the Champlain Sea. They are delightful creatures, forming complex social bonds eerily similar to those of human beings, and demonstrating a sophistication of speech which would be spooky if it weren’t so beautiful, a symphony of harmonic screeching greedily recorded by researchers ashore.

At one time this species almost certainly strayed farther afield. Historic accounts place them as far up the St Lawrence River as Montreal, and as far south as New England, sometimes spotted off Cape Breton Island and even in the Bay of Fundy.

To this day, Belugas from the Saguenay-St Lawrence Marine Park turn up in Halifax Harbour or New Brunswick’s Nepisiguit River. In 2017, one audacious individual was spotted in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, and just this spring, the Island hosted another Beluga in Mount Stewart.

But after generations of heavy exploitation, for their skin and blubber, belugas have been largely relegated to the St Lawrence Estuary. There were 10,000 here as recently as 1900, but by the 1950s, perhaps 1,000 Belugas were left. That’s about where they stand today.

Bones and Blubber in Tadoussac, Quebec’s Whale Watching Mecca

Tadoussac, on the estuary’s northern shore, is a town devoted to the whale, its every shop, café and hotel in some way acknowledging the giants offshore, the likeness of Humpback, Sperm and Beluga whales in particular adorning signs, windows and merchandise everywhere you care to look.

Hôtel Tadoussac

I stayed at the Hôtel Tadoussac, and was greeted each morning by the steel sculpture of a humpback’s fluke hanging over the yard. The whales sustain these people, and now, with their vehement support for the marine park, these people sustain the whales.

Marine Mammal Interpretation Centre

In the heart of town is the Marine Mammal Interpretation Centre, home to the largest intact display of whale bones in North America, and headquarters of the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals (GREMM), founded in 1985.

Their researchers identify as many individual whales as they can (using distinctive pigmentation, scarring and physical abnormalities), keep careful catalogues of the number and variety of whales visiting the estuary, take biopsies at sea to test for gender, pregnancy and contamination, and arrive promptly when whales wash ashore, to learn what they can from the carcass, and, when financially feasible, to recover bones.

Inside GREMM’s museum at the Marine Mammal Interpretation Centre, visitors first meet the sperm whale, its skeleton suspended from the ceiling, its skull tilted downward, and the jaws propped open, as if diving in pursuit of giant squid. There is an empty cavity on its skull where its blocky forehead once sat, a mound of soft tissue with which this whale has rammed, and sunk, whaling ships in centuries past. This is where the sperm whale stores its spermaceti, the precious oil for which the species was hunted, used in the lighting of lamps and the building of candles.

Also hanging from the ceiling is a fin whale 24 metres (78 feet) long, a humpback stood vertically, and on either side of the main entrance, the lower jaw bones of the Blue whale, each of these belonging to the family of “rorqual” whales, distinguished by their lined, pouchy throats, able to swell with ocean water while feeding. In between these giants are the scrappy skeletons of dolphins and belugas, the remains of extraordinarily rare beaked whales, even the mounted tusk of the narwhal, an Arctic species which occasionally sends representatives to the St Lawrence. A living narwhal was swimming the estuary during my visit, apparently adopted by the belugas.

My eyes were drawn to the far wall, where the North Atlantic Right whale is suspended just off the floor. They were the species most victimized by commercial whaling, and our local population, numbering maybe 360 in all, represents the last viable herd on the planet. This particular specimen had a name – Piper – tracked by the New England Aquarium most of her life. She was 24 years old when found dead in Percé, Quebec, in 2015.

Now on display, her skull accounts for a full third of her length, her mouth among the largest in the animal kingdom. Inside are the curtains of keratin protein we call “baleen”, which several whales use in place of teeth, filtering their diet of fish and krill from ocean water. So flexible and durable is baleen that the Right, Bowhead and Grey whales were each nearly exterminated in the early centuries of whaling just to acquire it, the contents of their mouths harvested to build hooped skirts, hats, corsets, fans and other fashion accessories. They were killed for their blubber also, which, prior to the discovery of spermaceti, furnished the lamp, candle and machine oils of the world.

In this gallery the whale nation is on display, GREMM and its researchers labouring to understand these creatures as best we might, as well as the factors contributing to their continued declines. And then they communicate these difficult truths to the public. Conservation rages on.

Into the Estuary With Croisières AML

There is no substitute for the zodiac, employed by many a business to bridge the gap between whale and watcher. The one I boarded belonged to Croisières AML, their staff explaining rules, expositing facts, and dressing us all in warm jackets and pants.

A pod of belugas, numbering several dozens, greeted us at the mouth of the Rivière Saguenay, writhing and frenzying as might a pack of wild dogs, their finer features entirely lost on faces and backs overwhelming white. Obeying his training and the laws of the estuary, our pilot slowed his craft and maintained his heading, taking us away from these endangered creatures and their simmering sea as gently and predictably as he could. When it comes to the white whale, we may not linger.

A little ways on we found fin whales, the second-largest animal on the planet, and their smaller cousin, the minke, closing ranks around us. So many spouts lit the horizon it was difficult to know which direction deserved our attention, and which whales were soliciting the majority of shouts.

The matter was settled by a single Humpback who, still a ways in the distance, threw her head and torso into the open air, both fins held open in divine surrender. The sonic boom of her re-entry took several seconds to reach us, so our pilot edged closer and cut his engines. Other zodiacs did the same, their passengers squealing as two or three humpbacks surfaced immediately off their bows and spouted into their airspace. Then she jumped again.

Almost all whales breach (which is to say, jump), but none more frequently, or with more abandon, than the humpbacks. This time she left the water entirely, 13 metres (42 feet) and 30 tonnes of mammal crossing the barrier between worlds, her appearance as stupefying as lightning, her landing as loud as thunder.

The entire performance took only an instant, and was among the finest things I have ever seen. There is no bracing yourself for the breach. It happens and you are speechless, and only minutes later you cannot believe it happened at all, your brain actively fighting the momentum of memory.

We don’t know why whales breach – to impress mates, dislodge old skin, barnacles or parasites, or to communicate nonverbally – but I like to think they breach because they choose to, because it makes sense to them in ways it never could to us, because their ancestors always have, and so they always will.

Creatures of Habit in the Saguenay-St Lawrence Marine Park

The day of my departure from the Saguenay-St Lawrence Marine Park I saw minke, Fin, Humpback, Beluga and Blue, all from the ferry between Les Escoumins and Trois-Pistoles, but my first sighting came earlier, immediately after breaking camp on Saturday, August 28^th.

Just as I opened my car door to depart, a rush and roar from the shores of Paradis Marin stopped me dead. Exactly as on the previous morning, two titanic mouths erupted from the water, swimming northeast to southwest, again obscured in the lingering dark. I checked the time – 5:34 am.

Indigenous societies throughout North America hunted whales for thousands of years, even in the St Lawrence, with courage and cunning and the restraint made necessary by traditional weapons. The Basque whalers of western Europe traversed entire oceans, bringing so much innovation to the hunt that it took the wealthiest nations of the world centuries to catch up.

When Europe and North America initiated the golden age of whaling, the concept of extinction hadn’t yet been invented, and a great many learned individuals, Herman Melville included, argued convincingly that whales, with the oceans of the world at their disposal, could never be destroyed by mere men.

This ignorance of ecology gave birth to industrial whaling in the 1900s, grinding the largest animals on our planet into oil, for lanterns and engines and even margarine. As recently as the 1980s, whales were killed just to cover the costs of the fleets pursuing them.

Now we kill them by accident, with fishing gear, ship strikes, contamination, plastic waste and noise. More so than ever before we can appreciate the fragility of the whale nation, endangered now by our indifference rather than our malice. After seeing them at the top of their form, in the romantic depths of the St Lawrence Estuary, I’m convinced that an ocean without whales is no ocean at all.

A version of this article was originally published by Your Local Magazine in 2021.

Would you like to know more about the regions near the St. Lawrence River? These articles might interest you:

• Best Things to Do in Tadoussac and Around Town
• Kayaking in Tadoussac: Discover the Serene Beauty of Québec’s Coastal Paradise
• Whale Watching in Tadoussac – Complete Travel Guide and FAQ
• 20 Must-See Quebec Attractions to Add to Your Province Bucket List

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