Moratorium Requested in Saguenay to Protect Belugas

More than half of all St. Lawrence belugas and two-thirds of females frequent the Saguenay. This finding was made by researchers at the Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO) and the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals (GREMM). The discovery is an important one: belugas’ exposure levels to boating and shipping noise predicted by their simulator – which is being developed to better assess the impact of noise and navigation and the best strategies to mitigate these impacts – are three times higher when consideration is given to the complex social characteristics of belugas and their distribution patterns. These results are raising concern amongst researchers, who recommend imposing a moratorium on the assessment of projects that could lead to a spike in maritime traffic in the Saguenay.

“Our results cast some doubt on the validity of the acoustic impact studies carried out to date for the beluga,” points out Clément Chion, director of UQO’s interdisciplinary socio-ecological simulation laboratory and director of the research program funded by the Government of Quebec. These studies did not take into account actual use of the site by belugas. They were based on the fact that less than 5% of the Saguenay population is found on average in the Saguenay at any given time. However, the studies failed to note that this 5% is not always made up of the same individuals.

For the moment, the Saguenay is a natural acoustic refuge. “We need to better understand how an increase in maritime traffic in the Saguenay will affect belugas, but above all, how to mitigate or compensate for the effects to ensure the belugas’ survival in the St. Lawrence,” warns GREMM’s scientific director Robert Michaud.