Dive around a tourist paddle board in Canada's Hudson Bay and re-emerge with six beluga whales, a handful of the roughly 55,000 species of creatures that migrate from the Arctic to the temperate waters of the bay each summer.
Far from the Seine, beluga whales went astray north of Paris in early August, and the estuary that flows into Canada's northern gulf provides a shelter for the beluga whales to give birth in relatively warm and sheltered places.
In the dark bay, beluga whales, with tiny black eyes and bright smiles, seem to like the presence of a group of tourists who travel to the remote town of Churchill — home to about 800 people, which can only be reached by train or plane — to observe the cetaceans.
For more than seven months of the year, between November and June, the bay was frozen.
The thaw marks the return of beluga whales to a haven, where they are protected from orcas and feed on the abundance of food found in the estuary.
The gray of young whales forms a distinct white with bright white adults, and they glide through the water in swarms while communicating with their own sound arrays.
- Hydrophone -
Nicknamed "Ocean Canary" because of the 50 or so different sounds — whistles, clicks, chirps and screams — they are emitted, and beluga whales are "social butterflies" and "sounds are the glue of that society," says Valeria Vergara, who has studied them for years.
Beluga whales are sound-centric species, and for them, sound is really like vision to us," researchers at the Rain Coast Conservation Foundation told AFP.
The 53-year-old scientist tried to distinguish multiple sounds from the depths when listening to the hydrophone's speakers — harsh sounds to untrained ears.
"They need to rely on sound to communicate, and they also rely on sound to locate back and forth, to find their way... Look for food," said Vergara, who has identified the "contact numbers" used between members of the pod.
The newborn beluga whale is about 1.8 meters (six feet) long and weighs about 80 kilograms (175 pounds) and still depends on its mother for two years.