Something that's "not good" is happening in the lower St. Lawrence River, and although he doesn't know exactly what it is, Richard Sears knows it's harming blue whales, the largest animals that have ever existed on Earth.

Sears is one of the world's foremost authorities on the whales, and runs a research station at Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan on Quebec's North shore, about 175 kilometres east of Sept-Isles. The federal decision to declare blue whales endangered was based on his research.

Since opening the station in 1979, Sears has identified and catalogued about 400 blue whales, but, he says, "a large proportion of them we've seen only once in 27 years." Apparently, after experiencing the St. Lawrence, most steer clear of it. According to Environment Canada, 20 to 105 blues are seen each year in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

What's more troubling is the absence of calves. The station has recorded only 15 calves in those 27 years, Sears says. But in eight summers of visiting Iceland, for a total of 25 days, already he has seen 12 calves.

Toxins may be a problem. On a scale of 0 - 15 for dioxins, which accumulate in fatty tissues and are one of the deadliest families of pollutants, Icelandic waters rate in the 0 - 3 range while the St. Lawrence is in the range 6.5 - 8, he says.

But there are other hazards as well: getting entangled in fishing nets, encounters with ships and recreational watercraft, oil spills, and acoustic disturbances (for instance, from geological explorations). All of these things together, however, "don't add up to a hammer blow," Sears says.

Under federal legislation, once a species is declared endangered, the federal government must develop a recovery plan. Sears has been asked to develop one for blue whales. However, he has received paltry funding for the work — $10,000 last year, and $2,000 this year. It takes about five years to develop a plan, and so far he has been piggybacking recovery-plan work on the backs of other projects.

He runs the research station on a shoestring budget of $140,000 to $190,000 a year, from which he maintains a full-time staff of four, and a summer staff of 15 to 20, including interns and post graduate students.

To raise money he has developed a unique approach to fundraising. He invites people to participate in the station's research, providing room and board for one or two-week sessions, which include going out in seven-metre, flat-bottomed, inflatable boats with researchers in search of whales. Details of the program can be found at www.rorqual.com.

"We call them apprentice field researchers," Sears says. He uses the word "passion" a lot in talking about his research. Obviously he delights in passing it on to visitors. "Some people don't recognize they have it until they get out in the boats," he says.

"It allows people to put themselves within a context that's larger than they are. It lets them contribute to the fabric of life, and that's something that's primary and real."

I asked him about his wish list, and it turned out to be simple. He wants to set up an underwater hydrophone system, to capture the "vocal signatures" of blue whales. "Then we'll be able to link sounds to behaviour." And then, he hopes, many mysteries will be unravelled.

But cost is a barrier. He can't do it on the station's current budget. We were having dinner in Montreal, and as I left, I raised my glass of wine. "To the hydrophones," I said, and he grinned. But the grin, through broad, was still a little wistful.