MONTREAL - Inuit whalers in northern Quebec are pushing Ottawa to reopen the minke whale hunt, a subsistence harvest they say will make up for tightening quotas on their preferred catch -- beluga.

The president of the hunters' association in Nunavik said the flesh of the swift-swimming minke was a key part of the local diet until the federal government abolished the hunt in 1972.

"We're trying to revive our traditional culture," Paulusie Novalinga said from his home in the Hudson Bay community of Puvirnituq.

"We're hunters, we live off the land -- we're part of the land."

Nunavik's marine wildlife board will submit the request to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, said Stas Olpinski, a scientific adviser to Makivik Corp., the body that oversees political, social and economic development in the region.

"There's an interest, certainly, in the meat," Olpinski said.

"There's also an interest, vis-a-vis the hunt, because of reduced numbers of beluga whales that are available to Inuit in Nunavik."

For years, Nunavik whalers have disputed beluga quotas set by the federal Fisheries Department, which has indicated the white whale's numbers are in decline.

DFO reduced catch limits for northern Quebec from 360 beluga in 2001 to 165 in 2006. Last year's quota for Nunavik was 174.

But the Inuit say the icy waters off their shores are full of beluga, which provide oil as well as a rubbery, dinner-table delicacy for locals.

Because most of the Inuit diet comes from hunting, trapping and fishing, the hunts should not be limited, Novalinga said.

"We don't enjoy killing wildlife, but we need to," said Novalinga, whose organization represents 5,000 hunters. "That's our food."

He said minke flesh, which he once sampled during a trip to Greenland, is a delicious alternative.

"It's very good meat -- rich, nutritious, full of iron," he said, adding that minkes are abundant in Nunavik waters.

The whales, which can grow to nine metres in length and weigh up to 14 tons, are among the world's smallest baleen whales.

A 2008 global stock assessment by the International Conservation Union's Red List of Endangered Species categorized the common minke whale as a species of "least concern."

Stefan Romberg, a resource management officer with the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, said minkes are currently harvested in Norway, Iceland, Japan and Greenland.

In Canada, only subsistence hunts for narwhal, bowhead and beluga are permitted.

"If DFO receives a formal request, it will be reviewed and a decision will be made with respect to a licence," Romberg wrote in an email.

Still, some northern Quebecers remain skeptical of opening a harvest they're not familiar with.

Johnny Oovaut, mayor of the seaside village of Quaqtaq and an elected member of Nunavik's regional government, said minkes were never hunted in his community.

"We've always been wary of strange foods," said Oovaut, whose town is on the coast of the Hudson Strait.

Instead, he wants Ottawa to loosen restrictions on beluga and leave management of the mammal up to the Inuit -- the way it was for thousands of years.

"Personally, I think they should mind their own business," Oovaut said of the federal Fisheries Department.

"We have our own set of rules."