One day at midafternoon early in August, a collection of aluminum and wooden outboard fishing boats, their small motors stilled, bobbed in the light chop of Manitoba`s mile-wide Churchill River. The occupants of the eight small craft, a mixture of Inuit Indians, Shedd Aquarium officials and Chicago and Canadian journalists, were casually linked by draping an arm or a leg from one boat into the other. It was a moment of respite in a landscape of unrelenting flatness as the broad, gray river swept along the rocky, treeless shores of northern tundra.
The boats had gathered in the middle of the river approximately a mile from where it empties into Hudson Bay. They had congregated for no reason other than that John Hickes, the strapping, 6-foot 2-inch, 220-pound leader of the Inuits in the group, had stopped his craft there. Hickes, 45, an effervescent, larger-than-life character whose presence naturally commands respect, was the man everybody looked to for leadership; the man who, in 1967, devised the method by which beluga whales are captured by hand, and the man who has carried out all 61 live captures of belugas since that time.
”I`ve lost eight teeth to whales so far,” Hickes said with a dazzling, expensively restored grin about his unusual enterprise. ”We`re just doing what our ancestors did, only we`re doing it with a rope instead of with harpoons and guns. Instead of killing whales, we`re capturing them. What we`re doing now is more dangerous to us than it is to the whales.”
Hickes had stopped his boat and gathered the others around him to give the whales, who inhabit the Churchill by the thousands in July and August in search of food fish, time to settle down. It was the third day of the Shedd`s whale-collecting expedition, an exercise that can be grueling. On this day, the whalers had been up and out on the river since 4:30 a.m. and had caught several specimens, but none of them had proved to be suitable candidates, being either too long, too short or the wrong sex (males instead of the females the Shedd preferred). Thus they were immediately released.
Hickes, having worked the shallows along both sides of the river for several hours, decided the whales had left that area temporarily because of the commotion stirred up by his boats. By taking a break of an hour or so, he hoped the whales would reappear.
Sitting in the gently rocking boats, members of the expedition traded small talk for a bit but soon fell mostly silent. What stilled the group was the awesome spectacle of the whales themselves.
By the hundreds, the whales swam upriver in an endless procession. The adults, with their smooth, snowy white skin and their 2,000-pound bulk stretched gracefully over 16 feet, were the most noticeable. About every minute they would break the surface like white-capped waves along the length and breadth of the river as far as the eye could see. Except for the creak of the stilled fishing boats and the slight, soughing wind, all you could hear was the swish of the water made by the whales and the loud, guttural blasts of expelling breath from the blowholes atop their heads.
Many of the whales would swim directly to the boats, slowing to turn on their sides to look over the humans, stopping to examine the boat bottoms and propellers. Their faces, round and small in relation to their size, are dominated by mouths that curve upward to give the impression of a permanently etched, benign smile. They are all the more charming to humans because of their insatiable, puppylike curiosity and playfulness, particularly when it comes to humans. Everybody in the boats, including the Inuits, who have lived with and hunted the belugas all their lives, and the marine biologists, who had spent their careers studying them, seemed dazzled by the display.
After about an hour, Hickes started his boat`s engine and headed back toward shallower waters in search of a likely candidate for capture, the other boats following. The method of capture is one Hickes invented as a 22-year-old in 1967 when he worked as a helper on a New York Aquarium collection expedition that sought to capture the first belugas for public display. Until then, collectors used nets, an extremely hazardous method for the whales, who could get caught in them and, unable to rise to the surface, drown.
Hickes, who as a youth had worked as a whaler hunting belugas for food, had in moments of youthful enthusiasm jumped from boats onto belugas to wrestle with them. A Canadian fisheries official who saw him suggested he try it as a method of live capture. Through Nanuk Enterprises, a company he formed, Hickes has handled the capture of all belugas taken since then, as his is considered the safest possible method for whales.
Captures usually are made by three catcher boats. Each has a ”jumper,”
a man who stands on the bow and looks for a suitable whale. Each jumper holds what looks much like a thick jump rope. The catcher boats scour the river looking for gray, juvenile belugas between 8 and 9 1/2 feet, the length limit the Canadian government allows for live captures. Spotting one, the men in the boats begin driving the craft in wide arcs, thumping on the boat`s side and yelling, trying to cut off the animal`s escape routes, forcing it into shallower water.
Once into about four feet of water, the jumpers wait for an opportune moment to leap on the whale`s back, placing the rope around its body to secure a grip. Another man jumps the tail, the whale`s sole means of locomotion, to try to stop it from swimming. Others leap on to more completely immobilize it, careful to keep the beluga`s blowhole above water so it can continue breathing. Once caught, the whales usually quit struggling almost immediately, becoming docile while a veterinarian determines its sex, measures its length and gives it a cursory exam for any obvious physical maladies.
If the whale passes the exam, it is placed into a vinyl sling lined with sheepskin and hoisted onto a larger transport boat. It is taken back to a shoreline motel in the town of Churchill and placed in a 30,000-gallon holding pool for more intensive medical workups and behavioral observation. On this particular day the search was successful, and the whalers returned with a young female, placing it in the pool with another caught the day before.
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The capture struggle between the Inuits and the belugas, raw and primitive as it is, was almost background to a larger struggle the Shedd faces. Animal-rights activism, once considered a small, somewhat eccentric collection of anti-vivisectionists, vegetarians and assorted pet lovers, has become a much bigger issue in the 1980s.
Perhaps riding the crest of the very real environmental concerns the world now faces, animal-rights activists have become high-profile protesters in the last decade. The protests range from violent attacks on laboratories that use and often sacrifice animals in the name of science, to campaigns to close down commercial poultry-factory farms, to neighborhood housewife campaigns for neutering stray cats. Somewhere along that broad spectrum is an amorphous movement some call ”Save the Whales,” a term sometimes facetiously (and derisively) used synonymously with environmental activism.
Unfortunately, there isn`t much that is amusing about the issue of saving whales and their ocean environments. Humanity`s eternal quest to subdue nature to its own purposes with the application of ever more sophisticated, usually violently disruptive technology is now in a position to do the same sort of irreparable damage to entire oceans that it is doing to entire rain forests.
The Shedd Aquarium, since its opening 60 years ago, has dedicated itself to preserving marine life and ecology through public education. But this year it found itself struggling with an assortment of animal-rights groups that oppose the capture and display of whales. Specifically, activists have mounted a vigorous campaign to stop the Shedd`s collection of whales for its new, $43- million Oceanarium, a colossal lakefront sea-mammal exhibit scheduled to open next autumn.
The Shedd contends that its mission is to educate its audience of millions of land-locked Midwesterners on the biotic diversity of the ocean universe and on man`s destructive assault on that universe. The animal-rights factions contend that it is cruel to capture and keep large marine mammals in captivity.
Several different groups in Canada, on the West Coast and in the Chicago region last summer formed a loose alliance to oppose the Shedd`s beluga-collection trip. They kept the Shedd in a state of suspense throughout much of the summer as they lobbied vigorously within the Canadian government, trying and nearly succeeding to get the Shedd`s beluga capture permit canceled. As it was, the Canadian government allowed the Shedd to take only two belugas instead of the three the aquarium wanted.
In opposing the beluga captures, the animal-rights groups have heavily criticized Hickes` collection method. They point out that the belugas in the river include many newborn calves, brought there by their mothers to fatten them up on spawning fish. They say, too, that many of the female adult whales in the river might be pregnant. The capture method, they say, could separate newborns from mothers and possibly traumatize pregnant whales, causing miscarriages or other birthing difficulties.
The Shedd captured two dozen whales in four days of collecting under the close scrutiny of officials of the Canadian Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries who patrolled the collection areas before, during and after the captures. They found no evidence of injuries or undue trauma. Indeed, the ministry also uses Hickes` team when Canadian government itself needs whales for its own scientific studies, considering Hickes` method the most humane.
Out of the two dozen, the Shedd kept three for observation, releasing the others immediately. It wanted a juvenile male and two juvenile females, but the Canadian government issued a permit for only two. Shedd officials decided to take two females, reasoning that if they took a male and female, they might pair-bond so strongly that they might ignore or become hostile to another whale introduced to them in the future. They hope to go back next year for a male, believing that the two females will easily adapt to his presence when he is introduced to them.
The three animals held for observation showed little fear of their captors but did display a remarkable curiosity about humans almost immediately by soliciting pats and strokes from handlers. In the end, the Shedd team chose the first and third whales it captured as the best specimens physically and behaviorally. The team used antibiotics to clear up a lung-worm condition discovered in the second whale and released it back into the river.
The two it kept were shipped to the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium in Tacoma, Wash., in a chartered cargo plane. There they have joined Tacoma`s three adult belugas captured in Churchill in 1984. The two Shedd whales will remain in Tacoma until sometime next summer when they take up permanent residence in the Shedd`s Oceanarium.
When they get to Chicago, the belugas will be part of what promises to be a compelling living exhibit, both emotionally and intellectually. The Oceanarium, an enclosed, 170,000-square-foot environment built on two acres of reclaimed lake bottom, nearly doubles the size of the original Shedd.
The new Oceanarium will be the largest indoor marine-mammal exhibit in the world. It will house sea otters rescued from the Alaskan Exxon/Valdez oil- spill disaster, harbor seals and a penguin colony, each species housed in its own spacious habitat. But most of all, it will have three species of cetaceans, the warm-blooded marine mammals we know as whales, including dolphins and porpoises.
The belugas, will be housed in their own, 400,000-gallon tank. The main, 2-million-gallon tank is scheduled to display four Pacific white-sided dolphins and three false killer whales, sometimes called Pacific black whales. The Shedd already has collected and is housing the dolphins in California. About half the size of belugas, the dolphins are not so people-oriented but are noted for their extraordinary beauty, grace and speed.
The false killer whales are another matter. About 18 feet long, they are slightly larger and move more powerfully and adroitly than the belugas. But they also share the personable nature of belugas, showing strong social attachment to humans, making them extremely popular at exhibits.
However, a pending lawsuit by animal-rights groups so far has blocked the Shedd from getting its false killer whales. The Shedd had proposed buying the whales from Japanese whalers who routinely drive them ashore and kill them. The Shedd believed nobody would object to saving the whales from certain death; the animal-rights lobby believes it is immoral for the Shedd to have any dealings with the whalers.
Until about 30 years ago, cetaceans were rarely kept in captivity and few people, scientists included, paid much attention to them. Now such exhibits are growing rapidly, with many cities in the U.S. and abroad expanding aquariums or building new ones, featuring special cetacean exhibits. Such exhibits have set off an unprecedented public hunger for knowledge of whales. Chicago`s oceanarium is, by most accounts, going to be one of the best such exhibits.
Though the beluga is not endangered-there are 23,000 of them living in the western Hudson Bay waters alone-it has suffered terribly from man`s onslaught. They were hunted by European whalers intensively for 300 years for the oil they provided for lighting lamps and lubricating watches. As late as the 1950s, a commercial whale operation in Churchill had dangerously depleted the bay`s whale population by slaughtering it to supply meat for Canadian mink farms.
That slaughter was halted in the early 1970s, and the Hudson Bay beluga numbers are recovering nicely. The same cannot be said for the belugas who once numbered in the tens of thousands in Canada`s St. Lawrence River. They have been hunted down to dangerously low numbers, and manmade pollution poured into the river seems to be poisoning them into extinction. Autopsies being done on dying individuals of the disappearing breed are showing that they carry 24 different contaminants, including deadly, cancer-causing PCBs. Many of them are in fact so contaminated with PCBs that their corpses must be treated as toxic waste following the autopsies.
Bill Braker, director of the Shedd, says he fully expects his beluga exhibit to make the plight of those whales a well-known story to Chicagoans and Midwesterners.
”The animals we will have in the Oceanarium will be ambassadors for all whales and all marine mammal life,” Braker says. ”We`re going to be telling a story of an entire environment and ecosystem that is severely threatened.” Braker, 62, has been at the Shedd most of his professional life and its director for the last 25 years. A small, slender man, his slightly owlish, professorial appearance belies a prickly, sometimes explosive nature, particularly when it comes to his 20-year dream, the Oceanarium.
Once Braker convinced the Shedd`s board to build he Oceanarium, the board had to find $43 million to finance it. Starting with $8 million of the Shedd`s own funds, it also got $5 million each from the state and the park district, on whose land the aquarium sits. The remaining $25 million had to come in fundraising from foundations, corporations and individual donors. As of last month fall the board had $38 million of the needed $43 million.
In 1982 the Shedd engaged architects at Lohan Associates to begin working with the aquarium`s handlers and design department to come up with a plan. For five years, Lohan architects and Shedd personnel crisscrossed the country and overseas looking at existing whale exhibits. What the architects came up with was a long, low structure curving around the original aquarium`s eastern face and jutting into the lake.
Inside is a vast, open space with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lake, giving the illusion of the whale pools extending into the lake water. Entering the Oceanarium from the original aquarium building, visitors will walk through a rocky, forested cove past a re-created tidal pool to get to the 50,000-gallon sea-otter habitat.
Passing the sea otters, visitors will arrive at the main, 2-million-gallon pool. At 180 feet long, 80 feet wide and 30 feet deep, it is designed to house the killer whales and dolphins.
A 1,200-seat amphitheater faces the main pool, to be used for six daily shows that will demonstrate behaviors the animals normally would display in the wild. The large pool adjoins another major display, a 400,000-gallon, 90- foot long, 70-foot wide, 16-foot deep habitat for the belugas. Their pool is connected with a smaller pool housing 6 to 10 harbor seals, who will, if they want, swim with the belugas.
Visitors will descend to a lower level to see a penguin-colony habitat. The big show, however, and possibly the biggest thrill of the entire exhibit, is viewing the whales underwater through massive windows. The belugas, for instance, from above the surface of the water look much like dolphins. But viewed under water they are most definitely whales, moving with slow, deliberate, magisterial bearing.
The irregularly shaped pools are meticulously designed to minimize sound disturbance to the animals, and to discourage the animals from swimming constantly in circles. It gives them underwater rock portals to swim through and a rough surface upon which they can scratch their bellies.
There also will be more private alcoves for the animals if they want to get away from their mates or away from public viewing. The amazing thing about the whales, however, is that they are as voyeuristic about people as we are about them. The belugas, especially, spend a great deal of time pressing up on the watery side of the windows, looking over human visitors.
It is precisely that human/whale connection that marine mammalogists who have experience with captive cetaceans believe most ameliorates the whales`
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space limitations in captivity. The pools at the Shedd go far beyond federal pool-size standards for the types and numbers of animals they will keep. But these are animals that in nature have whole oceans to live in, and they are thought to roam for thousands of miles on their migratory routes.
In the wild they migrate in search of food and sexual mates. In the Shedd those needs obviously will be provided for. Snatched from the endless variety of their own species in the wild, the whales, it is believed, replace in some degree the variety of ocean life with their relationships with handlers and the human procession before them.
And it is the eye contact between man and animal that ultimately makes the experience of an exhibit such as the Shedd`s promises to be a moving, almost profound experience.
The emotion the whales can evoke in humans certainly can be measured by the amount of controversy that has been generated by protest groups now fighting to keep whales out of captive exhibits.
Ed Morlan, a Palos Park electrical engineer who works for a Joliet chemical company, has been the most outspoken local critic of the Shedd Oceanarium. He is perhaps a well-intentioned but not particularly well-informed whale hobbyist. He says for the last five years he has spent his vacation time studying whales in nature. His interest in whales grew, he says, out of his artistic interest of wanting to paint and sculpt whales and deciding to see them in the wild.
Fascinated by what he saw, in time he began lecturing and presenting slide presentations on whales in local schools, mostly in the south suburbs. He says that when he was asked by children about how they could get involved with whale conservation, he decided to found the Midwest U.S.A. Whale Protection Federation.