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Public Lecture

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Cancer in Beluga Whales from the St. Lawrence Estuary, Québec, Canada: A Case of “One Health, One Medicine”

Daniel Martineau
Département de Pathologie et Microbiologie
Faculté de Médecine vétérinaire
Université de Montréal
St. Hyacinthe, Québec, Canada

Defining the causes of mortality in wild animal populations is difficult, largely because of their widespread distribution and poor spatial delineation. This is especially difficult in marine mammals whose environment is opaque to direct observation. Consequently, the respective roles played by natural factors and human activities in wildlife mortality remain intricate. The Saint Lawrence Estuary, which is roughly centered on the mouth of the Saguenay River in Québec only 500 km away from Montréal, is located in a region of major aluminum production, resulting in locally generated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) contaminants to which estuarian Beluga whales are exposed. Epidemiologically, PAHs exposure has been strongly associated with high rates of lung and urinary bladder cancers in the aluminum workers in that region. PAHs may have contributed to the high rate of cancer that also affect the Beluga whales. Furthermore, this contamination may have contributed to decreased immune functions, endocrine disruption and lower rates of reproduction. As a sentinel species, the beluga are exposed to the same environmental mixture of contaminants as people, they share a similar long lifespan and long lactation period (during which female beluga and woman both transfer their contaminant load to their newborn), a long and slow maturation to adulthood, and like many Western humans, a high body lipid percentage.

Please join us to hear Dr. Martineau’s fascinating lecture on the St. Lawrence River Beluga whales and the knowledge that we have gained from studying them.