RUSSIA: Russian biologists step up efforts to preserve beluga whales

Biologists study the Beluga whale in Russia's White Sea region as a way of preserving one of the unique breeding grounds for the sea mammal. Summer doesn't last long on the edge of the Arctic circle, but on the remote Solovetsky Island on Russia's White Sea, it also marks the remarkable return every year of beluga whales just metres from the shore. Highly gregarious, the adult white mammals frolic and twist together with their calves, sometimes in schools of 50, lazily breaking the surface with their long backs, before diving underwater again at a location now known as Beluga Cape. Scientists say it is the only place in the world where the whales come so close to the shore, offering a unique chance to study their behaviour. "Thanks to the camera that we installed under the water, we were able to find answers for a number of questions that we could not answer before, like why they come here, what they do here, why they dig in the sand and what happens after that. We discovered that by digging in the sand the female whales arouse themselves so they are ready to mate when the male whales come. Then after eleven and a half months, the mother whales return to this place to give birth and new whale babies appear," said Vladimir Baranov, a senior scientist at the Institute of Oceanology, in Russia's Academy of Sciences. Described by environmentalists as one of Russia's national treasures, the beluga face a fight for survival. Russian scientists warn that shipping, energy projects and pollution in the Arctic region pose a threat to the belugas' natural habitat. Baranov and a small band of marine biologists have spent every summer for the last eight years studying the belugas. Climate change may also threaten the belugas, but so far, the scientists say, there's no conclusive proof. Like the rest of the biologists, Baranov talks affectionately of the belugas and willingly spends two months in basic conditions with no electricity, running water or toilets, so he can observe the belugas, which resemble large dolphins. Doctor Roman Belikov, is biologist and an acoustic expert, who has been trying to crack beluga communications, but admits he still has a lot to learn. "They produce very, very many different sounds, like whistles, cracks, bleating, howls, sometimes the sounds look, i mean hear, like some small babies. Maybe it is true, because there are a lot of small babies with their mothers and of course they communicate between. And I think the mother can for example say something very serious to the baby, like don't do something, or come here, be with me, don't go away or maybe don't play with this bad boy," said Belikov. Wading out to the observation tower on the foreshore of the cape every day the whales appear, his colleague and team leader, Vera Krasnova, is returning for the twelfth summer. Her husband is also a researcher on the island and they work together, leaving their young daughter with her grandmother. In eight colonies around the world, there are an estimated 100,000 belugas, with 2,000 in the White Sea. Krasnova and her three assistants spend hours making careful notes of individual animals, with nicknames like 'Quasimodo' for a male and 'Belle' for a female. She believes the beluga whales also face a threat from growing tourism in the area. "Unfortunately there is a lot of tourism here which is not regulated. We are studying how the large number of boats passing by influences the behaviour of this group of whales, how they react on it. It is very important, because they are of course very friendly animals, but there is a limit to what they can accept. We are very worried that it causes the whales to abandon this area. This place is very important for them, because they give birth here and they bring up their babies here. The baby whales mature here," said Krasnova. The project to study the whales receives aid from the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW). It shares the concerns for the belugas' natural habitat as Russia plans to develop energy reserves in the Barents Sea. IFAW hopes the Solevetsky island will be declared a UNESCO heritage site, not just the famous monastery on its Southern tip, which was converted into Stalin's first major gulag, close to the isolated playground of the belugas.

ITN Source | August 3, 2007

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