September 28, 2001

Whale wanders off course

Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — A wrong-way beluga has been spotted swimming upstream in Alaska’s Koyukuk River, about 900 kilometres from the ocean.

The animal — a four-metre-long juvenile — was discovered last week by residents of the Dene village of Hughes.

Villager Ralph Williams was the first to see the whale.

"He heard something outside and thought it was a moose," Thelma Nicholia, the city administrator of Hughes, told the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. "He looked out towards the river, and there was the whale. It was coming up for air and shooting water. He couldn’t believe his eyes."

"This is the biggest excitement ever," Nicholia said. "No one’s ever seen a whale around here, not even the elders."

Village children were let out of school and taken by boat to see the whale.

It’s not the first time beluga have ascended far up Alaska’s rivers. In 1993, four beluga were spotted in the Yukon River near Ft. Yukon, 1,600 kilometres upstream from the ocean.