In The News
Kayaking the Fjords of Ellesmere Island
CBC Radio Interview
Arthur Black interviews Brian Keating,
Director of Conservation Outreach at the Calgary Zoo
Well, Brian Keating's back with us. Brian Keating is the Curator of Education at the Calgary Zoo and Brian the last time we talked you told us about rubbing shoulders with Beluga Whales near Somerset Island in the High Arctic, but this time I understand your going to talk about an even stranger creature - the Walrus?
Yeah, that's right, Arthur. You know when you look at a walrus, you can certainly see that they weren't designed for beauty. They're really designed for function, pure and simple. They look like a big bag of wrinkled leather with a moustache and tux - a bizarre creature.
Can you tell us a bit about where you were and what you saw?
Well, we chartered an airplane out of Resolute Bay and flew for about 2.5 hours north and then we descended down on this small fjord and landed on a very rough strip on the tundra right next to the water and I was completely awe struck. The fjord walls would sometimes rise 3000 ft. straight up from the water with big bulging glaciers coming out of the valleys. It was a surreal introduction to what was to be a two-week sea kayak paddle into paradise.
Wow! You haven't mentioned any wildlife. Did you see anything at all?
We saw wildlife right from day 1. Initially, first with bearded seals, which this is the first time I'd ever seen the bearded seals.
Do they have beards?
They have a good moustache. You'd like them. And ring seals. Ring seals I am familiar with from other Arctic trips, but I think that the one that I was the most keen on seeing was walrus.
Did you see them on the water or on the land, or..?
Well, we first saw them out on the distance. Actually, we first heard them before we saw them. They make a peeling sound when you're up in the Arctic - belches. Of course, on the quiet Arctic water, those sounds travel for kilometers, I guess, and you'd hear these low burps and belches coming from quite a distance.
Brian, any idea why they make those sounds? Too much beer or what?
Well, I guess it's probably because they eat so much food. Scientists that have autopsied walrus that were killed by hunters have found that they can have up to 200 lbs. of the guck from invertebrates in their stomachs also things like clams and other bivalve invertebrate. The way they feed on them is something very special. They go down onto the dark floor of the oceans - sometimes up to 200 ft. down - and those long whiskers on their face are actually receptive whiskers. They are very sensitive - they sit in a pocket in the cheek that's full of all kinds of sensory cells and they can tell when they bump into these bivalves and they pick them up and suck them into their mouths. The walrus has a bizarre feeding ability. Their mouth is shaped to hold the bivalve perfectly and it sucks out the guts so it actually pulls out the guts into their mouths and they swallow that and they spit out all the shells. So they just get the good stuff.
Now, they've got pretty serious looking tusks. Do they figure in the feeding process at all?
No, not at all. Tusks are still a bit of a curiosity. People have seen them actually use their tusks to help them haul out onto ice and they're probably a secondary sexual display with the males. Maybe there's some sort of combative reason for them. They do actually push each other around with their tusks and they can cause some damage. In some of the rogue, male walrus, one of the latest theories out now is that there are single males out there that have an attitude and they're the ones that can be dangerous and they believe, just judging by the stains of blood and oils on the bellies of these walrus, that they actually capture ringed and bearded seals and use their tusks to kills these seals very quickly - they hold them in their front flippers and then just do a down-head jerk killing the seal right away and then, believe it or not, they eat the seals.
Holy smokes!
That's just a fairly recent theory, but it sort of correlates with some of the stories that the Inuit tell of these rogue walrus in populations that are hunted coming up underneath of kayaks and actually tipping over kayaks or sinking them or, you know, just one day one of the hunters just simply doesn't come back from a hunt.
So, Brian, how close did you get to these walruses?
Well, remember, we were in a place that is totally remote - it's one of the most remote place you can get to in the Canadian Arctic - and so the walrus would approach us, sometimes very close, but always out of curiosity. At times we had walrus surfacing right beside your boat, which is quite a shock...
I would think so!
...these animals, when they're that close to be about the size of a grand piano. You know they weigh about a tonne and when the burst out of the water, it's quite a shock, but they did it out of curiosity and you could see the surprise in their eyes and their facial expression would get kind of a shock when they would be looking into our faces once they surfaced. But we actually managed to paddle up to some, sleeping on ice and that was a very, very special experience.
So it sounds like the approach to take, if you're going to take the approach, is the same as you do with grizzlies - you make lots of noise and make sure they know you're there.
Well we wouldn't make lots of noise, but we certainly would let them know we were there. In fact, we were very careful not even to clack our paddles against our kayak or snap our photography cases. There was one very sensitive, and very beautiful experience that we had about 3/4 of the way through the trip up one of these fjords. We saw a mother and a baby on a small ice floe and the youngster was suckling. And we were actually able to get in and sit beside them for probably a half an hour. As we watched, this baby suckled. And I'll never forget the view that we had - it was an early morning situation. Remember there's 24 hour light up there, but still early in the morning the light is still fairly low in the horizon and the sun was behind them and the ice floe that they were on was actually glowing with a translucent kind of blue and every time the baby would exhale, you could see the mist of breath envelop around its face and rise slowly like a little cloud. And now and again, the mother would shift, or the baby would shift, or they would look up and look at us and then they would relax and the baby would start suckling again. It was a very, very special experience.
Brian, I've got one last walrus question for you and then I'll let you go.
OK
What do you call two walruses - walruses or walrae?
Ah... I'll call them walrae, but listen to this! There's an astonishing coincidence in one of the Inuit languages that calls the hauling out site of walruses, uglies!!
Laughing...
Amazing!
Something to wallow about!
That's right!
Thanks a lot, Brian.
You bet, Arthur.
Brian Keating, he's the Curator of Education at the Calgary Zoo.
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