By: Rénald Fortier
Ingenium – Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation
“The bomb that will kill the porpoise” – A shocking use of air power in interwar Québec: The bombing of the beluga whales of the St. Lawrence River, part 1
The Franco Canadian physician / pilot Louis Cuisinier and one of the 45 or so kilogram (100 or so pounds) handmade aerial bombs with which he hoped to kill beluga whales. Anon., “La bombe qui tuera le marsouin.” La Presse, 5 August 1929, 11.
Did the title of this edition of our blog / bulletin/ thingee and the caption of the photograph you have just seen shock you, my reading friend? I am at ease with that. This was indeed my intention.
That shocking episode in the history of Québec / Canadian aviation began indirectly in France no later than December 1918, I think.
It was in fact at that time that Louis Marie Adolphe Olivier Édouard Joubin, a French zoologist based in Paris, France, more precisely a professor at the Institut océanographique and holder of the chair of malacology at the Muséum national d’histoire naturelle, suggested, in a note published in the Bulletin de l’Institut océanographique, to carry out a number of test flights to confirm his idea that a seaplane could detect medium-sized fish in shallow water as well as schools of smaller fish on the high seas. Information regarding the position of said fish would then be transmitted to fishing fleets.
To answer the question you were about to ask, my reading friend, malacology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of molluscs (clams, oysters, octopuses, snails, squids, etc.). (Hello, EP!)
Having heard of the suggestion in question, the commander of a Centre d’aviation maritime of the Aéronautique maritime, a division of the Marine nationale, Lieutenant Jules Auguste Jean Pouyer, informed Joubin that an airplane or seaplane crew could indeed see schools of tuna, red shrimps and sardines.
Acting on those results or independently, a researcher from the United States Bureau of Fisheries of the United States Department of Commerce took to the air aboard a United States Navy seaplane in July 1919. While flying near the off the coast of New Jersey, William W. Welsh reported that fish invisible from the deck of a fishing boat were perfectly visible, even if they swam at a fairly great depth.
At least one similar flight might, I repeat might, have taken place on the Atlantic coast of the United States around September or October 1919. This being said (typed?), it was between June and October 1920 that 2 seaplanes of the United States Navy performed more or less regular flights not far from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean.
Contacted by the United States Bureau of Fisheries, the United States Navy agreed to provide information to American fishermen operating in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Two seaplanes based in California made their first flight around mid-December 1919, for example. They detected two schools of fish in less than 15 minutes. Alerted by two radio messages, the captain of a small warship moored in the port of San Diego, California, informed fishermen who hastened to put to sea.
Seaplane flights (on both shores?) continued with more or less regularity until 1920 or 1921, until civilian aircraft took over actually.
A brief digression if I may. Yours truly wonders if the military seaplanes in question were Curtiss HS-2Ls, a type of flying machine found in the world-class collection of the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa, Ontario. Anyway, lets us move on.
Contacted by the California Board of Fish and Game Commissioners, the United States Navy agreed to provide one of its non rigid airships for at least one experimental flight in September 1920.
As you might imagine, France and the United States were not the only places where aviation seemed destined to play a role in the exploitation of marine resources.
Towards the end of 1921 or the beginning of 1922, for example, at least one Royal Air Force (RAF) flying boat carried out a number of experimental flights to detect schools of herring in the North Sea.
In July and / or August 1924, a trio of RAF flying boats carried out a number of experimental flights to detect schools of herring off the coast of Scotland in the North Sea at the request of the Scottish Fisheries Board. Members of that government agency participated in those flights as observers, but there was more.
A Québec aviator and First World War veteran, Kenneth Edgar Clayton-Kennedy, born Kennedy, proposed using aircraft to support the seal hunt taking place near the coasts of Newfoundland, and this as early as 1920, or even 1919.
For its part, the government of that dominion hoped to use for that purpose 2 of its 4 non rigid airships, a gift from the British government of which it took possession in November 1920.
However, at least one test flight carried out in January 1921 demonstrated beyond any doubt that those small aerostats could not withstand the violent winds which often blew in Newfoundland. The government of that dominion renounced the use of its airships at the very beginning of February at the latest.
Clayton-Kennedy, for his part, was excluded from the project he had launched towards the beginning of 1921. The skepticism of the firms involved in the seal hunt and various financial problems explained that ousting.
An Australian aviator and First World War veteran, Frederick Sidney Cotton, took over from there. He made his first observation flight in March 1922. The skepticism of the Newfoundland government and of the companies involved in the seal hunt was such, however, that information concerning the state of the ice and location of the main pod of seals was ignored.
Mind you, the amount of money Cotton wanted to get in exchange for said information was quite impressive: $40 000, or about $710 000 in 2024 currency, which was no small change.
The result of the skepticism was predictable: the ships and their captains found themselves trapped in ice, more or less far from the seals, which were not bothered. Worse still, the firms involved in the hunt paid Cotton for his services only with real reluctance.
With skepticism from firms and captains showing no signs of abatement, Cotton threw in the towel and left Newfoundland in August 1923.
In the spring of 1924, Newfoundland pilot and First World War veteran Roy Stanley Grandy had better luck. He and his Avro Baby light aircraft equipped with skis accompanied the hunting fleet. Exasperated by the hunters’ lack of success, the captain of SS Eagle agreed to use a crane of the ship to place the aircraft on the ice, allowing Grandy to take off. It did not take long for him to find a large pod of seals.
Surprised by that success but still skeptical, the firms involved in the seal hunt agreed to let Grandy accompany the fleet in 1925. The flights he carried out that year convinced all skeptics.
Would you believe that the aforementioned Baby was the aircraft completed in 1921 to accompany the last expedition to the Antarctic led by Anglo-Irish explorer Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton? Or that the absence of certain vital parts, it was said, grounded that machine once there? I kid you not, but I do digress.
The Scottish Canadian aviator Colin Spencer “Jack” Caldwell subsequently took over the seal spotting mission. An Avro Avian light / private plane similar to the one on display at the formidable Canada Aviation and Space Museum replaced the Baby in 1928.
As you might imagine, the efforts of Clayton-Kennedy, Cotton, Grandy, and Caldwell were so fascinating that they merit further research, but not today. Sorry. Back to France, in 1921.
That year, the aforementioned Joubin commissioned Henri Heldt, director of the Station aquicole de Boulogne-sur-Mer, near… Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, a research establishment of the Office scientifique et technique des pêches maritimes, to carry out new test flights dedicated to observing schools of fish.
Heldt took to the air towards the end of August, aboard a non rigid airship of a Centre d’aérostation maritime of the Aérostation maritime, a division of the Marine nationale. Dolphins (or porpoises?) and two schools of sardines were quickly detected.
Heldt took to the air again at the very beginning of September, aboard an aircraft, an airplane in fact, of a firm specialising in aerial work, the Compagnie aérienne française. He detected sardines once again.
Airship crews from a Centre d’aérostation maritime would carry out fish observation flights at least until June 1925.
But what about beluga whales, you ask, my reading friend? A good question. In fact, yours truly wants to make it clear that I hear your concerns and frustrations.
Before getting to the heart of the matter, however, allow me to clarify that the term beluga used in this article had nothing to do with beluga caviar. That beluga, also known as the beluga sturgeon and great sturgeon, is the longest and heaviest freshwater fish in the world. Would you believe that a very old female captured in the Russian Empire in 1827 was 7.2 or so metres (23 feet 8 inches or so) long and weighed 1 570 or so kilogrammes (3 250 or so pounds)? Wah!
By the way, the European sea sturgeon, also known as the Atlantic sturgeon or common sturgeon, very rare on the French Atlantic coast before the First World War, is a cousin of the great sturgeon, just like the Atlantic sturgeon, present on Québec soil.
To answer the question which is gradually condensing in your little noggin, the European sturgeon, Atlantic sturgeon and great sturgeon are toothless bottom fish with poor eyesight which feed on crustaceans, molluscs and fish of varying size. Sea monsters they certainly are not.
This being said (typed?), yours truly will readily admit that an unexpected encounter with a 7.2 or so metre (23 feet and 8 inches or so) sturgeon in the murky waters of a river would have scared the hell out of me, but I digress.
Allow me also to specify that the term beluga whale, in French béluga, which concerns us today was only rarely used in Québec in the 1920s to describe animals present in local waters. Fishermen, politicians and journalists almost exclusively spoke (typed?) of marsouins, in English porpoises, very rarely described as marsouins blancs, en English white porpoises.
And the fact is that the beluga whale is indeed a cousin of the porpoise and not a fish, as the Québec press of the 1920s frequently asserted. That cetacean, white in color when adult, which can be up to 5.5 or so metres (18 or so feet) long, is present in the estuary or gulf of St. Lawrence River, depending on the season. This animal has been present in those places for more than 10 000 years.
Despite what fishermen living in Brittany and Normandy asserted during the 1910s and 1920s, the beluga whale was not present along the French coasts. It is in fact a cetacean from the subarctic and arctic regions.
That absence, however, did not prevent said fishermen from despising the beluga whale. It tore the nets and monopolised the fish, they stated. Many fishermen complained bitterly and frequently about the lack of action from the authorities. Mind you, few fishermen seemed to mention that the beast which harmed their livelihood and afflicted their families was white. A detail.
Patrols carried out between the early 1910s and the end of the 1920s by small vessels sometimes equipped with light cannons or harpoon guns did not return to port with dead beluga whales. Several nets set up around 1920-21 did not capture any of those plunderers either. That was not surprising, fishermen replied, the beluga whale was far too smart to let itself be caught, or killed.
At the risk of going beyond the limits of good taste, yours truly would be tempted to mention that many cryptozoologists use the same arguments to justify the absence of tangible proof of the existence of their favorite critter, the sasquatch or the yeti for example. Too controversial, you say, my reading friend? You are probably right. I shall resist temptation.
Dare I also wonder if the French authorities gave a lot of credence to fishermen’s declarations concerning the aquatic bogeyman that was the beluga? Too controversial, you say again, my reading friend? You are no fun at all, you know.
Incidentally, some among said fishermen seemingly received large caliber rifles to kill their aquatic bogeyman.
Would you also that an eminent French zoologist / professor, Yves Marie Delage, proposed around 1919-20 to distribute tubes of poison to fishermen who would insert them into sardines? The mind boggles.
All those attempts to stop the scourge yielded no convincing results, which was hardly surprising given the total absence of beluga whales in French waters.
And you have a question, do you not, my slightly perplexed reading friend? If beluga whales were not at the origin of the crisis affecting French fishermen, what was? A good question. Overfishing was probably not to be excluded.
Before I forget it, it went without saying that the dolphins which haunted the waters of Normandy and Brittany never intentionally ruined fishermen’s nets. That did not preclude at least 3 500 (!) of them from perishing between 1921 and 1925, victims of the hostility of desperate French fishermen looking for scapegoats.
Is it necessary to mention the colossal number of sharks massacred in American waters in the days, weeks, months and years following the premiere of the very popular American feature film Jaws, in June 1975? That is what I thought. For comparison, there has been around 10 known deaths caused by around 70 known unprovoked shark attacks in 2023, worldwide.
One wonders if, by his very nature, Homo sapiens is not a killer ape. Anyway, lets us move on.
As complaints from Norman and Breton fishermen continued over the months, Charles Daniélou, a deputy representing a coastal region of France, Brittany, at the Chambre des députés and under-secretary of state for ports, the merchant marine and fisheries, asked, in February 1926, the Marine nationale to carry out experimental flights to hunt porpoises and beluga whales off the coast of Britanny.
French naval aviators wanted to cooperate as much as possible, but some of them might have wondered if their bombs would not cause more damage to schools of fish and lobster traps than to schools of porpoises and beluga whales.
In any event, a seaplane was made available to fishermen in February 1927. Any captain who saw porpoises or beluga whales was invited to hoist a large flag to the top of the mast of his vessel. If the seaplane’s crew saw it, it would go there to bomb the cetaceans.
And yes, it went without saying that the captain of the fishing boat had to leave the scene before the bombing began.
While the fishermen appreciated the helping bomb, err, hand, sorry, sorry, all the while wondering if the explosions would scare away the fish, the fact was that they appreciated a lot less the obligation to leave the fishing grounds. Their opposition to that obligation was such in fact that they very frequently decided, it was said, not to make the agreed signal if porpoises or beluga whales showed up.
Would you believe that beluga whales showed up in at least 3 very minor French literary works published in Canada between 1922 and 1927? More precisely,
- in a dramatic short story, “Le banc de la mort,” by the French writer / journalist Jean-Marie Joseph Mauclère, published in a November 1922 issue of the daily Le Devoir of Montréal, Québec,
- in a serial, “Les filets bleus,” by the French writer / journalist Lucien Delpon de Vissec, published in the January and February 1926 issues of the daily newspaper Le Droit of Ottawa, and
- in a sentimental short story, “Le bon secours,” by the French writer Georges Fontaine de Bonnerive, better known by his pen name, Georges de Lys, published in a November 1927 issue of the weekly magazine Le Samedi of Montréal.
In all cases, the beluga whales in question were animals hated by fishermen. They devoured fish and / or tore nets.
Having escaped a storm, one of de Vissec’s fishermen even exclaimed, words translated here, that “I did not want us to leave our carcasses to the beluga whales, who have no better piece than fishermen’s meat.” His companions did not want to leave their carcasses to angelfish, crabs, periwinkles, etc., either.
Is it necessary to remember that no self-respecting beluga whale developed the slightest affinity for human flesh? That is what I thought, but let us move on to Québec’s beluga whales.
Finally, you say, my reading friend? Finally!? I will let that little sarcastic comment slide, but only this time.
According to a text by a Québec journalist and editor-in-chief of the daily Le Devoir, Omer Héroux, published in an early August 1929 issue of that same daily, a text published 2 days later by a Montréal weekly, Le Bulletin des agriculteurs, words translated here,
For around ten years, porpoises [sic] have had a very bad press. Everyone seems to hold them responsible for the crisis currently suffered, in particular, by fishermen on the North Shore. Because porpoises [re-sic] are terrible guzzlers.
Before going any further, allow me to point out that, although “porpoises” might have had a very bad press since around 1919, the date of the observation of very large pods, it was really from 1926 that they were talked about in Québec, but back to the text published in Le Devoir.
According to Héroux, autopsies carried out on “porpoises” had shown that those animals devoured at least 45 or so kilogrammes (100 or so pounds) of fish per day. Taking into account that each “porpoise” spent on average 200 or so days in the St. Lawrence River, the average annual fish consumption per head of cetacean was 9 075 or so kilogrammes (20 000 or so pounds).
According to serious men whose names were not mentioned, there were 100 000 or so “porpoises” in the estuary and / or gulf of the St. Lawrence River.
According to Héroux, those animals, let us call them beluga whales from now on if you have no objection, seemingly consumed more than 905 000 metric tonnes (895 000 or so imperial tons / 1 000 000 or so American tons) of fish per year. An absolutely staggering and totally ridiculous figure.
Indeed, the total catch of Canadian fishermen working in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans for the year 1929, all species included, was 480 000 or so metric tonnes (475 000 or so imperial tons / 530 000 or so American tons). Which amounted to say that, according to Héroux, Québec beluga whales consumed nearly twice the amount of fish caught by all Canadian fishermen.
If I may be permitted a comment, Héroux’s aforementioned assertion was just as ridiculous as that of the Minister of colonisation, mines and fisheries, the lawyer Joseph-Édouard Perrault. The latter actually asserted during a speech given to the Assemblée législative de la province de Québec in January 1929 that the waters of the North Shore had been invaded by 100 to 150 000 beluga whales.
Did Héroux owe his figure of 100 000 beluga whales to Perrault’s speech, you ask, my aghast reading friend? That was possible.
Continuing our path on the road of ridicule, allow me to mention the statement of a government member sitting in the Assemblée législative de la province de Québec, the lawyer Edgar Rochette, who represented the North Shore, in the March 1931 issue of the monthly magazine Le Terroir de Montréal, according to which France had mobilised half (!?) of the Marine nationale in 1929 to destroy the beluga whales which haunted the French coasts.
Dare I suggest that lawyers turned baby kissers were hardly the persons best suited to deal with technical or scientific issues like the fisheries or the beluga whale? Too controversial? This time, I think I might agree with you. I shall not dare. Back to our story.
While it is true that beluga whales eat a variety of fish (cod, herring, salmon, smelt, etc.), they also delight in molluscs (clams, oysters, octopuses, snails, squids, etc.) and arthropods (crabs, shrimps, etc.). Each adult consumes 22.5 to 27.5 or so kilogrammes (50 to 60 or so pounds) of food per day, not 45 or so kilogrammes (100 or so pounds) of fish. And not all beluga whales are adults, obviously.
In fact, the population of beluga whales in the St. Lawrence River estuary numbered between 7 800 and 10 100 individuals at the beginning of the 20th century, and not 100 000 – or 150 000. That population, which certainly did not see its numbers grow over the years, moved with the seasons. It left said estuary around November to spend the winter in the gulf of said river.
Québec’s beluga whales therefore consumed 9 to 14 times less food, if not 13.5 to 21 times less food than thought Héroux and his serious men. It was in fact probable that the fish consumption of Québec’s beluga whales was up to 25 times smaller than that calculated by Héroux.
And you have a question, do you not, my slightly perplexed reading friend. If beluga whales were not at the origin of the crisis affecting the North Shore fisheries, what was? The Canadian scientific community must have had a good idea of what was happening in the depths of the St. Lawrence River. A good question, and a reasonable assumption.
However, the fact was that, in 1927, as incredible as it may seem, underwater life in the St. Lawrence River was virtually completely unknown, given the absence of aquatic research stations. And it is not yours truly who says so. The person expressing that opinion, in 1927, was none other than the curator of the St. Andrews Biological Station, not far from… St. Andrews, New Brunswick, and director of the Atlantic Fisheries Experiment Station, in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
And yes, my reading friend, the highly respected Canadian professor / editor / marine biologist / administrator Archibald Gowanlock Huntsman worked at the only 2 aquatic research stations on the Atlantic coast of Canada, but I digress.
One had to wonder whether part of the setbacks of Quebec fishermen was in fact the result of the activities of trawlers from the Atlantic provinces, which were increasingly active in the gulf of the St. Lawrence River. Overfishing was probably not to be excluded either.
Dare I suggest that the beluga was a scapegoat, Quebec fishermen and their political representatives being unable accept their share of responsibility in the crisis that affected many families on the North Shore? Too controversial, you say, my reading friend? You are no fun, you know. Cannot a guy have an opinion?
Speaking (typing?) of opinion, I think it would be a good idea to end the first part of this article. The two fingers with which yours truly was typing this text are starting to feel a tad ankylosed.
Rénald Fortier
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