In her office at the Vancouver Aquarium, Valeria Vergara is immersed in a world of sound - complex chirps, whistles, clicks, squeaks, grunts, screeches and foghorns. "It's deafening. It's like stepping into a jungle," she says. But Vergara isn't listening to the songs of tropical birds. Instead, the calls come from beluga whales, nicknamed the canaries of the sea for their singing. These Arctic inhabitants live in darkness for half the year so rely on sound to communicate, navigate, socialise and hunt. "Sound to them is like vision to us," Vergara says. "It's the fabric of their social world." On the other side of Canada, Robert Michaud relies on vision to gain insights into belugas in Quebec's St Lawrence estuary. Over 30 years he has compiled a family album in which each animal is pictured and named. Every spring, he looks forward to the return of Yogi, Miss Frontenac, Griffon and the others from their winter feeding grounds. "I start wondering who we will see this year, who is going to be there, who is going to be missing, who is going to have a baby," he says.
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