Poco: the Beluga Whale
Twenty summers ago, after a pleasant sail on Casco Bay on my friend Larry’s sailboat, we clambered into his canoe and paddled towards shore. Moments later, we had company. Within a stone’s throw of the beach, a torpedo-shaped, pale gray shadow glided under the boat. A moment later it was back, so close I could have reached out and touched its back. So close, the canoe-sized apparition could have easily tipped us over.
“Oh my gosh! Larry, it’s a….” I stopped short, it was on the tip of my tongue. “It’s a…” Nothing. So much for instant recall. And then, whatever it was, it disappeared. Coming ashore I stopped for coffee at Hannigan’s Market, still frustrated that I couldn’t recall the name of the creature. The moment I entered the store, Heather, the cashier, shouted to me, “Have you heard about the beluga whale?”
Thank you, Heather.
Larry and I were not the only lucky ones that summer. The beluga whale was seen by so many boaters that it was given the name Poco, after Pocologan, the New Brunswick village, where it was first spotted hundreds of miles south of its normal range in the Gulf of St. Lawence. A trail of sea stories followed the creature down the coast. A sea urchin diver reported that she was tapped on the shoulder, turned, and was face-to-face with the playful animal. Poco followed Peaks Islander, Tom Morse, in his sailboat across the bay to Portland. After he tied off the boat to a finger pier, Poco bumped the motor repeatedly, as if to say, “Where do you think you’re going?’ According to a Points East story that summer, the small whale grabbed the oar of a dinghy and took a family for a ride. Beluga stories were so common that one reader remarked: “Poco must be a reincarnation of Elvis; he’s been sighted everywhere!”
Poco’s visit to Maine was hardly unique. Our state slogan: Maine, the way life should be, is a magnet for creatures from all points of the globe. In the winter of 2022, a Steller’s Sea Eagle, decided to fly 3,000 miles across Canada from its home in eastern Siberia. The magnificent bird (its massive orange beak looks like it could break a man’s leg), veered south in New Brunswick, and landed in Georgetown, just north of Casco Bay, drawing birders from as far away as Texas. After dining on sea-ducks that winter, the eagle spent the summer in Canada, only to return to Maine for an encore the next winter.
Not every animal fares well in Maine outside its customary range. A few years before the Steller’s Sea Eagle sighting, a Common Black Hawk, a raptor indigenous to Central America (but occasionally reported in Texas), winged northward to Maine. There, it dined on gray squirrels in Portland’s Deering Oak Park and attracted a crowd of daily spectators. It did not anticipate winter. In January of 2019, the hawk was found with frostbite, taken to a bird rehab facility, and eventually euthanized. The following year, a statue was erected in the park, commemorating the John Glenn, the Amelia Earhart of the hawk kingdom.
Manatee? Those lovable Florida herbivores? We are awaiting our first sighting in Casco Bay, but as our waters warm, it’s only a matter of time. In 2016, a pregnant female was sighted on the south side of Cape Cod. Because of falling water temperatures, the manatee (nicknamed Washburn) was captured and eventually flown to Sea World in Florida. Washburn’s traveling days were not over. She was eventually released and a few months later was sighted in the Bahamas, perhaps on vacation. Her current whereabouts remain unknown.
A moose on Peaks Island? There are moose in every county in Maine, but two miles off the coast of Portland? As evidence that moose roam wherever they damn well please, I present the Missouri Kid, a bull moose whose journey originated in Minnesota, angled south to Iowa (where it passed unseen through the suburbs of the city of Des Moines), before it meandered across the state line into Missouri. According to a Sports Illustrated account at the time, Wayne Porath of the Missouri Department of Conservation noted, “So far as I can find in the literature, there’s never been a wild moose in Missouri before—at least not since the Ice Age.”
Yes, the Missouri Kid wandered widely, but did it swim out to sea? I think not. In 1989, a mainland Maine moose was compelled by some inner Magellan to wade into Casco Bay and swim due east: destination, Peaks Island. It made landfall, perhaps with purpose, at a local club, the Trefethen-Evergreen Improvement Association, and meandered down the beach, browsing on eel grass, rockweed, and sea lettuce. Behind it, dogs barked and dozens of islanders trailed by. The spectacle passed by our house while our family sat down for dinner. Then, the moose slipped back into the bay, and swam off. Perhaps to catch a movie in Portland.
At least that’s what I’m told. We never looked up from our plates.
Pelicans in Maine? Of course. Last summer, several American White Pelicans were sighted in Casco Bay. The bazaar appearance of the southern birds seem to confirm the story of my friend, Rick Callow, who claimed that a pelican flew by his scallop boat in a snowstorm several years ago. What’s next? Flamingos?
Which brings us back to Poco. The beluga whale continued its journey south to Boston Harbor, where the little whale delighted boaters with his playful curiosity. Then, like the Steller’s Sea Eagle, Poco returned to Maine. Observers noted that she lacked her usual playfulness and curiosity. Sadly, early one morning, after the tide receded, she was found lifeless on a mudflat, apparently from an infection.
But her kindred spirits continue to appear in our state from all points of the compass. A few years ago, my daughter Kate and I went out for a run around Peaks Island when up ahead, perched on top of a sign, a large white bird silently watched us go by. We stopped, unsure if the creature was alive or a plastic replica. We jogged on, and looked back. The snowy owl—a denizen of the arctic—swiveled its head more than 180 degrees and blinked. Then, like a Harry Potter apparition, it silently winged off.
Flamingoes anyone?