Ocean Watch

Monday, May 4, 1998

Beguiling belugas find
a home in the Midwest

LAST week, while visiting my childhood home in Wisconsin, I phoned a friend in Chicago. "You should visit the Shedd Aquarium," she told me. "They have belugas now. And some Pacific white-sided dolphins that really put on a good show."

I smiled to myself. Did this woman really expect me to travel a zillion miles from Hawaii to the heart of the Midwest, then spend money to see some whales and dolphins in an aquarium?

She did. And she was absolutely right. I thought being able to visit whales and dolphins in the middle of Chicago was a wonderful idea.

I gathered my favorite relatives and proposed a trip to Chicago. "The aquarium there has belugas!" I told them.

My sister looked uncertain, then said: "OK."

"I'll go," murmured my cousin.

I was disappointed by this cool reaction until my aunt spoke up and I realized the problem.

"What's a beluga?" she asked.

Oops. I had forgotten that until I saw one at the Vancouver Aquarium a few years ago, I didn't know a beluga from a bratwurst. And neither do most people, a good reason to display these uncommon animals.

Beluga whales, also called white whales (beluga is Russian for white), live only in the cold waters of the arctic and subarctic regions around the North Pole. These 12- to 15-foot-long pure white whales are no relation to Melville's Moby Dick. That fictitious animal was a sperm whale, abnormally white.

To my mind, beluga whales have two remarkable features. One is that since the bones in their necks are not fused, as in most whales, belugas can bend their necks. This trait is likely an adaptation to living much of their lives under pack ice and having to flex their necks to search for breathing holes.

To aquarium visitors, however, this neck bending means more than an evolutionary advantage. It means charisma.

When a beluga glides behind an aquarium glass, it can turn its head and watch you, its dark, intelligent eyes following yours. This feature, combined with the smile on its permanently upturned mouth, causes most observers to instantly fall in love.

The other major allure of belugas is their songs. These small whales click, whir, whistle and hum so loudly, and so continually, old-time sailors nicknamed them sea canaries. At the aquarium, these noises are music to the ears.

The whales use the echoes of their sounds to navigate, find food and communicate with one another. This sonar system is so good that when trapped in a net, if one beluga finds an escape hole, the others speedily follow, even in dark, muddy water.

Belugas have other charms. Instead of having the firm, sleek bodies of most whales, belugas are chubby. Their roly-poly fat undulates as they swim.

This is cute but it's also crucial. The small whales need as much fat as they can carry to survive in their ice-cold world.

Once during winter, a researcher spotted a herd of belugas with little domes of ice, like igloos, sitting on their heads. It was so cold, the animals' exhalations were freezing instantly and piling up on their exposed skin.

Of course, my family members and I absolutely loved Chicago's five personable beluga whales, one of which is pregnant. And during the dolphin show, as the agile animals leaped and twirled, my sister whispered, "I never heard of white-sided dolphins before -- they're beautiful."

My guess was that most of the hundreds of people at that show that day had never heard of them, or of beluga whales, either.

But we all know them now. And the next time we hear a news report of belugas being poisoned by toxic chemicals, or of dolphins being drowned in tuna nets, it will mean something to us.

Whales and dolphins in the Midwest? It's a great idea.