Beluga Days: Tracking the Endangered White Whale

The title of this review is something of a cliche. Whales have gone from being considered a natural resource to an animal that receives very favorable treatment in the popular press. At least in the United States popular sentiment has turned against hunting of these animals. Today, commercial whaling operations employ tour guides, not harponists. Whale watching has replaced whale hunting. But understanding these creatures and the challenges they face, as well as deciding how best to help them, remain strikingly difficult issues. 'Beluga Days,' by Nancy Lord, discusses many of these issues in detail as she focuses on a small genetically distinct set of Beluga Whales and the many obstacles to their survival.Nancy Lord is a Cook Inlet salmon fisherman living near Anchorage, Alaska. Like many others, she became entranced by the small Beluga (white) Whales which shared the salmon she harvested. In the 1990s, she also began to notice a sharp decline in their numbers, observations that were borne out by scientific surveys of the population. She then threw herself into conservation efforts only to discover that the issues and motivations of various parties involved varied widely. The population decline, it seems, was due primarily to native subsistence hunting. But the native Alaskan hunters, who were themselves subdivided into those with Eskimo and non-Eskimo heritage, were understandably upset at the prospect of acknowledging their mismanagement of a communal resource. Moreover, they were unwilling to give up yet another one of their traditional rights. Other participants also had different motives. In the book we meet many of them: George Hayden, the old fisherman who fondly recalls the "Beluga Days" when the town would celebrate a largely ceremonial hunt; Kris Balliet, a leader in the movement to get the Beluga Whales classified as an endangered species, but someone who frequently made mistakes in dealing with local Alaskans; oil representative Judy Brady, passionate about the Belugas and frustrated by the blame heaped (without scientific justification in this instance) on her industry; and Joel Blatchford, the Inupiat Eskimo who was simultaneously a spokesman for the hunters and for an endangered species listing. Each of these people, and many others, receive a sympathetic portrait in Lord's book. As she writes about these people it becomes clear that the preservation of Beluga Whales, and the best means of doing so, is a multifaceted issue.If the supporters of preservation had multiple agendas, the government to whom they were appealing had only one: proper political procedure. The book describes in agonizing detail how slowly both the state and federal government agencies moved even as the Beluga population declined towards critical numbers. Courtroom debates went on at length, various agencies fought over jurisdiction, and aside from a "depleted" listing among marine animals, little was accomplished. This was immensely frustrating for all concerned, and Lord herself highlights part of the problem in her book. Citing Garret Hardin, she notes the Beluga's had become a "tragedy" of the commons. Lacking any form of established property rights, it was easy to hunt them to extinction, but difficult to preserve them. Lord correctly notes that such property rights can be communal instead of individual, but by the 1990s, tribal communal controls had broken down at Cook's Inlet. And it turns out, government agencies were a poor alternative. If nothing else, this book points to the need for serious reform in protecting endangered species.But at the end of the book, Lord raises a far more important issue. Should we even try to save the whales at all? What difference would it really make? These are almost heretical questions for an environmentalist, but Lord gives them a fair hearing nonetheless. After all, extinction is a natural part of evolution's paradigm. Arguing that "humans cause extinction" is simply silly, because it presupposes that humans are not a part of nature, a claim that no evolutionary biologist would make. On a more practical level, Lord askes whether Belugas will ever again be a significant part of a subsistence diet. She concludes, probably not. Native populations have grown and it is unlikely that Belugas will ever offer more than a token tie to their past even should the species survive. And what of the rest of us? Will those of us who have never watched the Beluga Whales in Cook Inlet miss them when they are gone? Lord attempts to answer these questions as best she can. Some frankly do not admit to easy answers. She wants to assert a moral basis for preservation, a claim that all Belugas, even those taken in traditional hunts, are important. But on what basis? Ultimately, the solution lies in an older, spiritual paradigm. We are the caretakers of the earth, and if we want to watch Belugas, we must find a way to do so. Is this view anthrocentric? Yes, emphatically so. Is it unscientific? Probably. But it has a hope of working. And the proof lies in the new preface to the 2007 edition of this remarkable book. There we find that in 2006, for the first time in years, families lined up on the Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet to watch a large pod of Beluga Whales. We as a society are richer for it.If you have even the slightest interest in conservation issues, by all means get this book. Lord is an excellent writer and her deeply personal journal of discovery makes for fascinating reading. This is by far one of the best nature books to appear in this decade.

Beluga Days mainly deals with the relict population of belugas in Cook Inlet, detailing their history of exploitation, their inevitable decline due to over-hunting, and the conflicting interests between conservation and native hunting rights. Lord lived along the western shores of Cook Inlet, where she occasionally saw the white rolling backs of belugas as she fished. This led to an obsession with the animals, resulting in her traveling around the country, talking to government officials, conservation group members, scientists, and native hunters about their plight, as well as visiting the Shedd aquarium in Chicago to see belugas in captivity and traveling to the St. Lawrence estuary and Saguenay Fjord to see them in their native element. I would have given it five stars, but the repeated typographical errors (often involving the simple omission of a long dash, resulting in words running into each other) and the lack of at least a few photographic plates or even an index forced me to give it four stars. A really great read nonetheless.

As the title of this review points out, Beluga Days is a book that will appeal to a much broader readership than scientists in marine labs or whale researchers devoted to habitat conservation. I've never read a book about whales in my life, but this one gave me a chance to catch up to all those who have. I'll also say that I don't often read books that are strictly about animals, but perhaps that's why I liked this one so much.Nancy Lord writes with the creativity and skill of a novelist or creative essayist, and Beluga Days, as a result, is no dry documentation. She manages to write both scientifically and intuitively, and brings investigative and relational research techniques with her into this multi-dimensional book. I found myself drawn into the stories of the players in this environmental drama, moved for the first time about a topic that had I had never before known about.Lord paces the story well, answering questions I had just as I was about to ask them, and interspersing fact with feeling as often as her situations lent themselves. Throughout the book, she introduces "witnesses" for both sides of the Cook Inlet Beluga debate and gives all voices a fair chance to speak to her readers. This is probably one of the most balanced and un-biased environmental interest books I've read in a long time.Nancy Lord has written not only a factual representation of the endangerment of the "White Whale," but a beautiful one, too. Her investment in the issue and time spent peering at all possible angles is readily apparent, and the picture she presents should be studied by any who claim similar interests.On a smaller note, I found the hand-drawn maps at the front of the book very helpful while reading about various Alaskan locations, but would have appreciated even more visual aids like these throughout the book. Also, as another reviewer mentioned, there are several strange but obvious editing errors in the text that tended to distract me from the content of the chapters. But these complaints do little to mar the quality of the writing, or the "wholeness" of the story it presents.

This is a surprisingly good read! I was very impressed with Lord's ability to tell a very complex story in an interesting and engrossing way. I remained surprised that the book kept my attention and that I wanted to read on. I can highly recommend it!