Today we arrived at the Saguenay Marine park. We set up the campsite and then headed out to explore. The Marine Park is very large and managed not only by Parks Canada but but Quebec Parks as well. We grabbed the brochure of the things in the area and inquired about some programs of interest. When we got out of the car we saw beluga whales in the river. This is the area just about where the Saguenay River and the St. Lawrence meet. The beluga like the warmth of the water and the calmness for raising their young.
I loved looking at the mamas with the binoculars. I couldn’t see the babies everyone else was seeing and I got upset. Mom said we would come back and try to see again later.
The white dots in the water are all belugas.
We worked on our XPlorers books and found a hidden geocache with information about white (beluga) whales. We learned that the species is threatened and the population is 1/10 of what it was about 75-100 years ago. People are mostly to blame and they have strict regulations about distance and harassment now to help protect them.
We learned about upwelling. Where the currents from the deep water hit a shelf and push the phytoplankton up the water column and this attracts an entire food chain to this area. Where the St. Lawrence and the the Saguenay meet there is massive upwelling.
We earned our dog tags and had a fun little ceremony.
