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I'm in Churchill in northern Manitoba it
is a small town of about 900 people
situated on the southwestern shore of
the Hudson Bay Churchill is pretty
remote there are no roads that come here
and because of that there's this sort of
beautiful sense of isolation
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when you're quiet all you can hear is
the shore you can hear the bay moving in
and out the landscape around here is so
striking and do in fact to the really
harsh climate that it exists in there
really strong winds so the trees only
grow on one side and you've got all of
these smooths over rock faces that have
these amazing brightly colored lichens
growing on them and in between all of
that they're wildflowers swinging in the
wind so it's really kind of a smattering
of all of these amazing bits that you
wouldn't expect maybe to exist up here
in such a harsh place what's cool about
Churchill and this region is that
they're actually a lot of different ways
to get to see wildlife in nature around
today I get to go kayaking with the
beluga whale which is one of the most
frequent visitors here in Churchill and
I am thrilled these guys are here in the
thousands and from what I hear belugas
are pretty quirky I meet a D who is a
kayak guide here in Churchill and she is
incredibly passionate about what she
does she has grown up here and knows
these animals better than anyone how
many beluga whales are around here right
now so our population is the Western
Hudson Bay population so it's about six
to eight thousand on the coastline but
in our area in the river here it's about
three to five thousand oh my gosh so how
do we approach these whales respectfully
when we're kayaking we're not going to
be kind of charging after the whales at
all we're gonna kayak out and they're
gonna come to us so we're not going to
go find them they kind of dictate what
we're doing oh well I hope some come say
hello
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ready yes I'm ready
thank you
you guys need permanently open water to
survive obviously because they need to
breathe so in the summer time when this
is all defrosted they come here for a
number of different reasons they have
come to have their babies because the
water is so much warmer here than it is
in the bay they come here to feed and
then they come here to rub their dead
skin off on the rocks so because they
actually show their skin over here
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what's really kind of crazy about beluga
whales is that you can hear them sort of
before you see them
they're all around you coming up for air
and it's kind of like a forceful loud
sound like - go speak yeah they're
really good at hiding and then one just
kind of comes right up next to your boat
they just want to play like this guy
under there
Churchill River is chock-full of beluga
whales it's not like you just see one or
two every ten minutes
sometimes you get really lucky and see
maybe like five altogether playing and
rolling around and they all just kind of
rotate and come close to you everything
about Churchill is about being in
somebody else's world it's not our world
anymore it's the whales world and you're
so aware of that when they're around you
and it's really neat to put yourself
under their circumstances Churchill and
the area around it is full of beautiful
wild things and they are precious and
they're special and it's one of those
places that you just have to see to
understand and believe