A Journal, with Pictures

Today we are going to explore the Hud­son Bay by boat leav­ing the riv­er and going up the coast to a prime Bel­u­ga gath­er­ing spot. We leave late morn­ing so we take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to vis­it the Eski­mo muse­um which is a short walk away. The muse­um is well done and you come away appre­ci­at­ing their art and incred­i­ble abil­i­ty to sur­vive and flour­ish in the harsh­est climate.

We then take the lazy Bear bus to the dock, but first we don sur­vival suits (what we called poop­ie suits in the Navy). This should have been a clue. We board­ed the very impres­sive lazy Bear boat designed for this mis­sion. We start­ed out toward the mouth of the riv­er and who do we run into our moth­er and cub bear swim­ming toward town. Wal­ly the lodge own­er, who is our guide today, indi­cates we have to herd the bears back to their side of the riv­er. Once we get this done, we spy Papa bear, who is by him­self being a lazy bear. Male bears are not too friend­ly toward cubs, want­i­ng all the atten­tion, so mama and cub stay away.

Now we turn out onto Hud­son Bay and its cool and a lit­tle rainy for the next hour pound­ing up to the Bel­u­ga spot. When we final­ly get there we are in shal­low water (12 t0 20 feet and the Bel­u­gas are feed­ing on fish that hide in the rocks on the bot­tom (artic char, trout, pick­ril) so we actu­al­ly stir up thi­er prey. The Bel­u­gas inter­act with our boat and we are sur­round­ed with whales.

To view a video on You Tube of the Bel­u­gas cour­tisey of Eric and Janet Prim go to :Bel­u­gas

We watched the whales for about an hour then had lunch and chat­ted. We then head­ed back, with an hour of pound­ing back along the coast back to Churchill. A long day in the ele­ments and every­one was ready for a lit­tle COPA socialization.