Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whales Truths By Nancy Lord

Characters Þ E-book, or Kindle E-pub ✓ Nancy Lord

Living in waters adjacent to Anchorage, Alaska, the beluga whales of Cook Inlet are an isolated and genetically distinct population. Thought to number more than 1000 in the early 1990s, a sharp population decline has brought them near extinction. Original in approach and incisive in its questions, Beluga Days explores how conservation laws, management policies, and human behaviors have affected the shrinking beluga population. From hunters, regulators, environmentalists, researchers, and businesspeople to whale enthusiasts, Lord encounters an ongoing debate wrestling with the immediate need to protect the whales, as well as a respect for the centuries-old tradition of Native subsistence hunting. Beyond its compelling characters and particulars, Lord's story offers readers a deeper understanding of the often uncomfortable, often rewarding, juxtaposition of humans and the natural world. Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whales Truths

It took me a little while to get through this novel. Not because it wasn’t incredibly interesting and fun, but because it is a great, easy read. You can read a chapter, put it down, and then pick it up a week or two later. There is so much information in this novel that my head is still reeling from it hours after I have turned the last page.

Most of the books I read around conservation are about grass roots efforts to save an animal, species or landscape. This was a little more formal in the outlook. Where many of these journeys are an incredibly personal anecdote that is incredibly difficult to put down, this was filled with information about the bureaucracy, politics and many different peoples who are directly involved in the lives and livelihoods of the Cook Inlet Belugas.

I know next to nothing about Belugas. They’re not a species of whale that happens to be anywhere near Australia. And I honestly don’t read many books about marine animals – my area of obsession tends towards the terrestrial animals. So not only was I finding out amazing amounts of information about this cutely funny looking mammal, but I was also finding out a lot of information about the ecosystem in which they live and the society which surrounds its shores.

One of the parts I loved about this book was that it investigates all of the different stakeholders in the health and safety of the Cook Inlet Belugas. This starts with Lord discussing her own insight into these whales and her own experiences in finding out more and more about their endangered status. Then she starts to delve into the scientific practices of research and understanding. Following this, the politics and requirements of the legislation in protection are investigated. And, finally, to round everything off beautifully, the needs and wants of Native Americans are talked about. By discussing every single angle of the debate, Lord is able to provide a uniquely diverse and well thought out discussion of just what the Cook Inlet Belugas are facing, and just how they might be saved. Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whales Truths In Beluga Days, Nancy Lord focused on the belugas in Cook Inlet, Alaska: a critically endangered population of fewer than 300 whales. Every chapter tackles a different issue: sport hunting, whale-watching, captivity, tagging for research purposes, subsistence hunting, whaling cultures, contamination levels, conservation of the endangered St. Lawrence Estuary population, and extinction.

Sadly, as of 2021, despite conservation measures taken to date, the most recent population estimate of Cook Inlet belugas is 279. So it seems the belugas are now even worse off than when the book was published.

Further reading:
Beluga: A Farewell to Whales
Voices in the Ocean (chapter about captive belugas) Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whales Truths Belugas are amazing whales. Well, all whales are amazing. Belugas are different because they are the only whales that have the equivalent of necks and can turn their heads. They, like their relatives narwhals, have virtually no dorsal fins, apparently because they need to be able swim under ice. I learned these and many other things from Nancy Lord's fine book Beluga Days.

Lord has run a salmon-fishing business and lives on the shores of Alaska's Cook Inlet, where a large number of beluga whales live. She became interested in the whales' fate around 2000, when some people realized that the whales' numbers were decreasing. There was controversy over whether hunting should be stopped. Much of the hunting was subsistence hunting by Native Alaskans, so the subject was highly controversial. Lord started going to all meetings about belugas and writing about them.

She learned not only about the whales but about the different perspective of Alaskan Athabascans, who had lived in the area a long time, and Inuit and Yupik peoples from farther north who had moved to the Anchorage area, bringing their custom of beluga hunting from areas where belugas were much more numerous. The organizations that wanted to curtail beluga hunting needed to be sensitive to Native Alaskans' needs, especially those of people who depended on the whales for meet, in this case a small town of Athabascans. After much negotiation, all hunters agreed to a one-year hunting ban, and later restricted hunting. Some groups tried and failed to get endangered species status for the Cook Inlet belugas, which are separate from other beluga groups.

Lord has little patience with white people who want to end even subsistence whale hunting because whales are so intelligent. But she loves whales and has done a great to get to know the Native Alaskans involved. I learned that many Native people are uncomfortable with whale watchers watching our food and see anything but subsistence hunting as unnecessary disturbance of the whales. As someone who loves whale watching, I was sorry to hear that, but I won't stop watching.

Scientists have looked into other factors that endanger whales, particularly pollution. Lord traveled to Quebec's St. Lawrence River, where the belugas most endangered by pollution live. She has investigated apparently every factor that endangers belugas. I am deeply impressed by the book. Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whales Truths I really loved this book - loved it enough to leave it in a British Columbia rental cabin on the shores of Howe Sound so someone else can love it as well. I have lived in Alaska since 1988, and I know personally several of the people she references or interviews, and I have video of huge groups of belugas moving up Turnagain Arm, so it was a very personal story to me. She does a great job mixing the hard science with the lyrical observations, and to have read it as my “vacation book” as I did a 10 day Alaska cruise followed by a stay in Squamish, BC was just perfect. Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whales Truths great book....learned a lot about the wonderful white whale near my home....
Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whales Truths

This is a wonderful book Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whales Truths Beluga Days is a poignant, informative and eye-opening book about many different things. To be sure it is about belugas and specifically the belugas of Cook Inlet and their fight for life in the waters of Alaska. But it also about the systems that surround our environment and our interactions and effects on it. And it is also about respect for cultures that white people took over and almost destroyed, but how those Native cultures are still trying to survive and thrive in places that finally allowing them the chance at it again. It is also about our responsibility (and our lack of taking responsibility) for this world, the beautiful creatures of it and the need to do so immediately in order to make the future a better one than it might currently be. This is a beautiful book. A little slow in parts as it dives into the nitty-gritty of specific sciences and the laws and systems that make saving animals much more difficult. BUt overall this book is wonderful and interesting. I would highly recommend it. Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whales Truths I must agree with the review by Booklist that this book is an, intriguing blend of scientific writing and impassioned journal of discovery.

I loved the way Nancy Lord managed to openly and honestly display both the environmentalists arguments for protection while also managing to get the reader to empathise and understand the continued need for beluga hunting for a variety of Native Alaskan cultures. Lord does not argue for one cause to be blamed for the low Cook Inlet Beluga numbers, she does not push one stoic agenda throughout the book, she instead attempts to understand and share with the reader the vastly complex relationships of all Alaskans and the smiling beluga.

A very different read for me, and most definitely not a beach read, but very interesting and an eye opening book if you consider yourself to be an animal lover and protector. Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whales Truths I thought this would discuss more the evolution of the beluga whale. Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whales Truths Written by an Alaskan salmon fisherman who has watched her local population of belugas fall, Beluga Days talks about the Alaskan and Hudson Bay whales, the problems they face, and the natives that still hunt them. It gives some insight into why substinence hunting still exists, although for me that is not reason enough. Beluga Days: Tracking a White Whales Truths