The Beluga Café: My Strange Adventure with Art, Music, and Whales in the Far North

Norman P. Goldman is a retired Civil Law Notaire (Notary) who also
specializes in Montreal history and culture.

Jim Nollman has been involved in animal communication research for over
30 years and is well known around the world for his experiments in
playing music in the presence of whales. Part wilderness adventure and
part natural history lesson, The Beluga Café is a fascinating account
of how Nollman and two of his artist friends traveled to Canada’s
Mackenzie Delta in order to communicate with belugas (also known as
white whales) by means of an electric guitar and underwater sound
equipment.

The three men installed themselves at a campsite they named the Beluga
Café. They met with Native people and began exchanging ideas about
Native whale hunting. They also encountered the problem posed by oil
companies that are conducting seismic exploration offshore and thereby
driving away the whales. The failure of the Canadian Department of
Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) to protect endangered species such as the
belugas is a prominent theme. As the author notes, “[the oil
companies] won’t stop exploring until somebody convinces the DFO
scientists that it’s actually their job to document any potential
connection between the blasts and the whales’ migration.”

From the beginning, Nollman and his fellow adventurers had “no
interest whatsoever in taking wanton risks, shooting or otherwise
harassing animals, drilling for oil, studying lost tribal customs,
monitoring missiles and other artifacts of ecological disaster.” All
they wanted to do was to sight the whales and communicate with them.