NOAA Fisheries’ Alaska Fisheries Science Center (Marine Mammal Laboratory), in collaboration with the Alaska Beluga Whale Committee and the North Slope Borough, will be conducting aerial surveys for the Eastern Bering Sea stock of belugas in Norton Sound and near the Yukon River Delta, Alaska. Through the surveys, NOAA hopes to derive an updated population […]
The annual migration of some beluga whales in Alaska is altered by sea ice changes in the Arctic, while other belugas do not appear to be affected. A new study led by the University of Washington finds that as Arctic sea ice takes longer to freeze up each fall due to climate change, one […]
Children’s singer and songwriter Raffi may have brought beluga whales into popular culture with his 1980 song “Baby Beluga,” but surprisingly little is actually known about the life and ecology of these elusive marine mammals that live in some of the world’s most remote, frigid waters. Two distinct populations spend winters in the Bering Sea, […]
Using a new net, marine biologists from the Alfred Wegener Institute have, for the first time, been able to catch polar cod directly beneath the Arctic sea ice with a trawl, allowing them to determine their large-scale distribution and origin. This information is of fundamental importance, as polar cod are a major source of food […]