Freshwater whales in Lake Superior?

There’s a thread in IMHO about kayaking in the Minnesota area and I posted a link suggesting the North Shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota. At the bottom of that link was “whale watching”. I followed the link to here where it lists the sightings of whales in freshwater Lake Superior.

I had no idea that there are whales that were in there (or that would travel that far inland.)

According to this website, there are no freshwater whales in the world.

But according to this one, there are(but it doesn’t list Lake Superior)

And this one switches it back a bit:

So, should the North Shore Visitor’s whale watching page be taken with a grain of salt or is it just a salty tale?

I believe these are beluga whales.

I found this source from google:

http://www.ehponline.org/members/2001/suppl-6/853-861fox/fox-full.html

Which says:

Did you check the drop down menu bit on the first link you provided? It states that the whale watchers are amusing themselves. It’s hard to read, but it also says very specifically:

I live in northern Wisconsin, and this seems pretty typical of the sense of humor in the North Woods. I personally own a bright pink sweatshirt that says “I visited the tropical paradise of Hayward, WI!”

:smack:

Thanks.

While there are freshwater dolphins in the Amazon and China, there are no whales which would be considered freshwater species. Whales do often venture into freshwater, and have no physiological need for salt water (there might be an association between some skin ailments and long freshwater exposure, but that connection isn’t clear as far as I know). Beluga whales do venture into the St. Lawrence Seaway and may spend large amounts of time there, but Lake Superior is beyond their range. Beluga Whale Range and Habitat, and a range map is available here I doubt even vagrants could have been reported from Lake Superior, but it’s possible - and now that I’ve said it, some Google-fu master will probably prove me wrong. :slight_smile:

I’ve lived on the shores of Lake Superior for almost my whole life, as have my parents and grandparents. We’ve seen some big trout, but no whales :slight_smile:

Somehow, I missed the “Lake Superior” part of the OP. Next time, could you put that in bold, or a larger font, or maybe in red? Thanks.

Yeah. Beluga whales go up the St. Lawrence. But they’re not gonna hop up Niagra falls like spawning salmon, right? So Lake Superior is right out.

Actually, before the Seaway was built, they wouldn’t have made it past Long Sault near Montréal, would they?

Bat damn, that’s a great image. Whales leaping up Niagara Falls… 'cause nothing else would be big and strong enough.

Lake Superior does have a small tide though, I’ve read.

Having grown up in the UP, my first response on reading the title of this thread was to burst into braying laughter and double-check the forum this was in.

The closest thing we have to whales are members of the Polar Bear Club. :smiley:

Aren’t there canals that bypass the falls?

The day that wales start jumping 176 feet in the air is the day that I move to the Gobi desert. :stuck_out_tongue:

Yes, but it is unlikely that the whales would be eager to share a confined space with the thrashing screws of a large freighter (a large number of which barely fit into the locks) and I suspect that a whale entering an empty lock would tend to cause the lockmaster to suspend operation until the whale exited downstream.

Technically speaking, dolphins are whales. They are toothed whales (like Orca and False Killer Whales) as opposed to baleen whales. So the river dolphins mentioned in the OP are, technically, freshwater whales. Not that you would ever find them in the Lake Superior.

– skammer, whose first job out of college was at the Shedd Aquarium/Oceanarium in Chicago

About a year or two ago a beluga whale made its way up the Deleware river near Philadelphia. That’s a pretty far trip from the ocean, its a 2 hour ride by car from Philly to the NJ shore.

Recently a dead whale was recovered near Montreal. It appears that a ship had collided with it and pushed it all the way upstream.

AFAIK, no whale left to its own devices gets as far downstream as this. I don’t even know if they come any farther than Quebec City.

For one thing, upstream from the Fjord du Saguenay, the water gets much, much shallower and warmer, which they may not care for. As it happens, the cold, deep water at the confluence of the Saguenay and St. Lawrence make Tadoussac a famous whale-watching site.

Good point. I wouldn’t want to be trapped with the trashing screw of a large freighter either. I’m not even sure I’d want to be trapped with the non-trashing screws of a large freighter! :wink:

[nitpick]Technically (cladisitcally), you’re right. But if that’s the game, you could say that Killer Whales are bony fish, and you’d technically be just as correct. :)[/nitpick]

Conventional wisdom is often polyphyletic. :wink:

And there was the one in London*, too.

[sub]* not necessarily the one in Ontario :smiley: [/sub]