"No Sign Of Recovery" For St. Lawrence River Beluga - 25% Of Males Have Cancer

[hatrack]

EDIT

As well as banning the hunt, the government in the 1980s restricted the use of chemicals such as the toxic pesticide DDT and the industrial chemical PCB, which were found in beluga carcasses washed up on the St. Lawrence's banks. But 25 years later, the numbers of beluga in the river have not changed, staying at between 1,000 and 1,200, says Véronique Lesage, a researcher at the Canadian fisheries ministry.

Meanwhile, other chemical threats have flowed in. "The beluga is currently accumulating the biggest load of persistent contaminants," chemicals that do not break down quickly, said Michel Lebeuf, a specialist from the Maurice-Lamontagne research institute. Lebeuf's team analyzed the carcasses of beluga over 15 years and estimates that traces in the whales' fat of chemicals banned in the 1980s have fallen little - in fact, they are "still very significant."

This is partly explained by new knowledge about the mammals' ages: belugas live up to 70 years, twice as long as previously thought, according to a recent Canadian Zoology Review report. So belugas swimming in the St. Lawrence today could have been alive in the 1970s, when dangerous chemicals were pumped intensively into the water.

The poisonous cocktail is passing into the whales and via their placentas to their unborn young; 25 per cent of male beluga in the St. Lawrence have cancer.

EDIT

http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=b5ac8a65-536e-47d7-a1f4-9b38b8fea056