Polar Bear vs. Beluga Blog - July 22, 2006

So, there is a film crew in town this weekend creating a documentary about Churchill's beluga whales. As it turns out, I know the director - from ages ago and from strange and random encounters every few years.

Anyway, I agreed to do an interview and helped them find a few other locals with whale stories, true and otherwise. During this interview, she focused on polar bears vs. beluga whales and asked if there was a future for beluga whales tourism in Churchill.

I thought for a bit and finally said 'no'. It is a strange answer considering Churchill's has some of the best whale viewing opportunities in the world - on a good day there are 3,000 whales in the river, on a bad day there are 300. Belugas swim right up to the boat, around and under it. It is pretty cool and really should be a model for tourism development in the rest of the arctic.

But, we really only get three or four thousand visitors through the summer - a pretty small number that is either stable or even declining. This is mostly due to the fact that it costs a lot to get up to Churchill - around $1000 just to fly from Winnipeg. You can do it cheaper by driving to Thompson and hopping on the train - but the combination of heavily loaded grain cars and summer heat have kind of wrecked the tracks and you have to expect the train to be late (which can be part of the charm...).
Things are different in October, chartered flights come into Churchill on a regular basis and several travel companies organize trips to Churchill to see polar bears. There are a lot of options.

Of course, this is due to twenty years of marketing and promotion by National Geographic, BBC, etc... Churchill's belugas were just overshadowed by the bears and only now is limited media interest being shown to them.

But beluga enough doom and gloom - this doc looks kind of neat and might change the way, at least, Canada views Churchill's whales. Plus I was wearing my 'I Club Baby Seals' shirt for the interview so maybe Paul McCartney will come up here next year for a benefit concert!