"Beluga: A Farewell to Whales" is definitely one book I wish the title for was not so apt. In this work Pierre Beland does an amazing job in bringing to life a remarkable animal, the beluga whale, and in particular one population of this species, those that inhabit the immense St. Lawrence estuary in Canada. He also brings to life in a sad and sometimes sickening way the plight facing these animals, cetaceans that even though legally protected in the St. Lawrence since 1979 do not seem to be showing any signs of signifcant population increase.

Beland's book in part reads like the current popular medical and forensic autopsy shows, as the author, a dedicated and highly trained biologist, seeks to determine what is killing the whales of the St. Lawrence. Ready at a moment's notice - even on holidays, the dead of winter, or in the middle of the night - to retrieve whale corpses found ashore or adrift, Beland and his colleagues probe each whale carcass for the secrets of its life and its death. With dedication and skill worthy of a criminal forensic team they uncover the truth of each whale's demise, which are often untimely as young whales or even newborns are almost as common in his lab as much more mature adults.

What Beland finds is chilling. The whales appear to be dying from pollution, a case he boldy and definitely makes in this book. Examintion of the tissues from the deceased whales reveal staggering amounts of industrial and agricultural chemcials, including polychlorobiphenyls or PCBs, DDT, dieldrin, mirex, chloradane, and more. Even though some of these chemicals haven't been used in the region for decades, their use banned, they continue to wash into the St. Lawrence, a vast river system that drains almost the whole of the Great Lakes region. Beland writes that beluga whale milk in the estuary has been found to contain as much as ten parts per million of PCBs and six parts per million of DDT; a lot considering fish containing fives times fewer PCBs are considered unfit for human consumption. Ships carrying waste with more than fifty milligrams of PCBs per kilogram (or fifty parts per million) require a special transit permit; sadly, the average male beluga roaming these waters already has that concentration of PCBs in his blubber by age nine. Without suprise, this massive concentration of pollution within the whale's bodies has lead to a host of ailments. St. Lawrence belugas boast the dubious honor of the highest incidence of cancer in any marine mammal, perhaps even a higher rate than that found in man. Beland discusses not only the cancer but also the other health problems that are affecting this population of whale's very survival.

Beland clearly is in love with the beluga, a beautiful white whale that he writes wears that "peculiar beluga smile," a feature that gives the species "the look of an enigmatic wise man or, rather, of a happy imbelice." Remarkable animals, the author spends a great deal of time discusses the biology and behavior of belugas, particularly in a very concise and fact-filled appendix. Among the most vocal of all whale species, their repertoire is more varied than that of dolphins and extremely complex. Highly social creatures, they may surpass dolphins in their potential for social communication. They also according to Beland clearly surpass dolphins in terms of their echolocation capability; in fact this ability is so sophisticated that the belugas have been held for many years by both the United States and the former Soviet Union for studies to aid in the development of sonar technology. Beland discusses this at some length, including the remarkable story of a beluga that escaped from such a facility in the Ukraine and ended up in of all places the Turkish coast, very far indeed from the species usual haunts.

The book is also valuable for its history of the interaction between the beluga whales and the people of the St. Lawrence. Hunted for centuries - from the days of the earliest European settlers and by native peoples before that - Beland discusses the use of weir fisheries to trap whales and of the odd, bizarre, and cruel war fought against the beluga between 1928 and 1939 which even involved bombing the poor whales from the air! Also discussed is the history of the beluga in captivity, covering everything from the early futile attempts involving the likes of P.T. Barnum to today's more sophisiticated modern oceanairums, which although Beland has some misgivings about them, may play a vital role in trying to save the species.

Finally the book is a good one to get for those interested in the St. Lawrence estuary itself, an impressive body of water and ecosystem in its own right. As much a sea as a river, the St. Lawrence flows downstream only half the time, it main current reversed every six hours by the tide in a never ending war between the light brown river waters flowing from the Great Lakes and the green salt water alive with seaweed and all matter of marine animals. Home to a variety of seabirds, fishes, crustaceans, molluscs, and four species of seals - many of which are more charaterstic of arctic climates and are not found as far south anywhere else in the world - even without belugas the river and its life are remarkable and need protection.

A charming, heartfelt book concerning a species not often written about. The sad toll the animal's own environment takes on it's health, and the dawning inevitability of the whale population's demise is shocking. The novel made me not only want to find out more, but it woke me up and made me want desperately to help.