Beluga whales mostly live in remote areas of the Arctic, making it difficult to collect data on their behavior. In a recent paper published in Marine Ecology Progress Series, UW researchers attempted to do exactly this. The study used a dataset spanning 15 years that followed two different populations of belugas to learn more about the baseline behavior of the whales.
Between 1997 and 2012, the scientists tagged whales with the help of Native communities in Alaska and Canada. Whenever a whale surfaced to breathe, the tags transmitted data about the whales’ locations and the depths they dove. Researchers found that belugas will dive as deep as 1,000 feet below the surface to find Arctic cod, an important food source.
Belugas themselves are a food source for human communities in the north, and according to one UW researcher, this research can help with management of belugas as a food resource.
Next, researchers plan to study how climate change may be affecting belugas’ migration behavior. If sea ice in the Arctic freezes later than usual, researchers want to know how this affect belugas’ migration to and from the Bering Sea.
