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The Thin Red Line (24)
NinaM
![Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Note Writer [C: 608 W: 0 N: 1516]](http://i1.treknature.com/misc/g-n-g.gif) (4981) | Today I felt like posting an Ile Verte picture, as I took about 1600 when I was there and some of them I like very much.
The ones I was looking for today are very minimalist. We watched the sun set on the river one evening and it was amazingly beautiful. Sometimes the sky would be very tormented, glittering with oranges and dark silhouettes, other times, farther than the sun, either to the east or west direction, the pastel colours and tranquil waters would bathe us with awe. I stood there with my friend Diane, without a word for at least half an hour.
Such tranquility is hiding life in its primeval forms and in its more evoluted you could find in the ocean.
At that height in the St.Lawrence, the biggest mammal on earth is hiding in the depth, accompanied by a multitude of other warm blooded creatures.
In the estuary you can find porpoises, dolphins, whales. There are many species of whales: white whales (beluga reaching up to 5 meters), sperm whales (up to 18 meters), minke whales (up to 8 meters), fin whales (20 meters), blue whales (27 meters), humpback whale (15 meters),black right whales (18 meters).
Those huge cetaceans live in the estuary of the St.Lawrence and their decline is alarming, particularly the white whale (beluga). Cetaceans are exclusively aquatic mammals contrary to the beavers or even seals who live partially on the ground. Dolphins, porpoises and whales are the result of evolution toward aquatic life. As thus, their anatomy has been strongly modified to adapt to marine life. Their muscles can accumulate more oxygen than those of terrestrial mammals. When they are diving, they slow down their heart rythm and reduce their blood circulation except for the heart and brain circulation. Most of their diving don't exhaust their oxygen reserve. Because they are living constantly in immersion, they also have specific respiratory faculties. They breathe less frequently and more efficiently than other mammals. At each breath, they empty completely their lungs and fill them up again to their full capacity. Usually, cetaceans breathe one or two times by minute at the most when they surface and they can stay beneath water for a long time. The longest dives of cetaceans rarely go over 30 minutes.
Following the anachistic raise of commercial hunting of whales, their population declined one species after the other. Most of the countries participate since 1946 to an international whale commission, the International Whaling Commission. That commission hasn't been able to stop the decline of the species of bigger whales but participated actively to researches and protection of cetaceans.
In 1986, an international moratory put an end to commercial hunting of all species of whales but some countries like Norway, Iceland and Japan continued for some years afterward. They finally also put an end to it but started to emit permits to capture the whales for scientific researches authorizing more than a hundred captures a year. The flesh of these capture is sold complying with the Commission defending to waste such meat. Some conservation groups accused the countries participating to those captures to disguise commercial hunting in scientific researches.
In the moratory suspending the hunt, only First Nation people are allowed to hunt if it is for local uses and consumption and even so, they also have to limit their captures.
In Eastern Canada, there existed some whaling stations to hunt Fin Whales and belugas until 1972. Today such hunting is allowed only to local consumption and is being practiced mainly in the Arctic by Inuit hunters who have been exploiting belugas, narwhals and boreal whales.
The protection thus allowed on different whale species has helped to raise the population on some species but others, like the Black Right Whales, don't seem to benefit from it. Furthermore, the modifications man brings to their environment with their industrial wastes being deversed in the river, by controlling the water flow of the rivers, by foraging the depth of the marine soil and by the practice of unviable fishing plus the raise of maritime traffic are bringing a dark shadow on the future of cetaceans.
In Québec and the Maritime Provinces, the species in the way of being extincted are almost all maritime species, mainly whales: Black Right Whales, Belugas, Bowhead Whales, Blue Whales and Northern Bottlenose Whales. The other mammals are the Wolverine, the Woodland Caribou and the American Marten.
This information brings a lot of reflexion. I copied for you this information that I found in "Mammifères du Québec et de l'Est du Canada" published by Michel Quintin Publishings (Mammals of Quebec and Estern Canada).
And this brings us back to this picture. While I was watching this fantastic scenery, I thought of whales, dolphins, seals and all those beautiful creatures, hidden under the surface, maybe going to sleep. Do they go to sleep?
This picture is a view looking west, toward the St.Lawrence Gulf and the Atlantic Ocean. Preserving our maritime fauna is so important, the delicacy in which all living creatures live is so tenuous. Let's hope for the future, let's hope for the following generations, the kids of our kids of our kids... let's trust they will find the answers.
Meanwhile, my way is to show you the beauty. The fantastic pastel colours of the estuary, the richness of its vastness, peacefulness and quietness... at times.
Francine
ISO 400
Slightly cropped at the bottom, nothing has been changed except resized for TN. This is the true view of this sunset. |
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