Beluga whales spotted again at northern N.W.T. lakes

For the second year in a row, hunters near Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., have found beluga whales in a chain of lakes east of the community.

About 85 whales were counted in the Husky Lakes last week by members of the Tuktoyaktuk hunters and trappers committee, as well as officers from the federal Department of Fisheries and Oceans, on a flight over the lakes.

At that time, fisheries officers also found five beluga carcasses on the shores of the lake. The cause of death is not known.

Beluga whales often feed in the Husky Lakes during the summer, leaving in the fall via a narrow channel to the Arctic Ocean, where they continue west on their annual migration toward Russia.

In late 2006, a pod of belugas became trapped in the same lakes when ice clogged that exit channel. Instead of letting the whales die a slow death of starvation or drowning, the federal department hired Inuvialuit hunters to kill 39 trapped whales in November.

But this time, the hunters and trappers committee decided against any intervention, sparking opposition by some in the community.

"If they get caught in there they will eventually drown, and that's not a good thing for us to see an animal suffer," Paul Voudrach, a spokesman for the Tuktoyaktuk hunters and trappers, told CBC News.

"But we don't have the money to conduct a project to do any harvesting of whales from the Husky Lakes area because it's just too costly."

Voudrach estimated that last year's harvest of whales cost them more than $75,000.