The Alaska Center for Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration is back in Canada to help prevent endangered North Atlantic right whales from colliding with vessels in the busy Gulf of St. Lawrence. This marks the third year of ACUASI as an official part of the Canadian government’s North Atlantic right whale monitoring program and its fifth year […]
Seventy-five large whale entanglement cases in 2019 and 53 cases in 2020 were confirmed nationally, fewer than in 2018. NOAA Fisheries has released two National Reports on Large Whale Entanglements Confirmed in the United States, for 2019 and 2020. In 2019, there were 75 confirmed entanglements nationally, which was a decrease from 2018 but remains near the historical […]
New information may help with recovery efforts for endangered Cook Inlet belugas. When listening to beluga whales, the sound of a crunch or a clapped jaw may be a reliable indication that a beluga whale just successfully captured or missed a fish. In a new published paper on beluga whales in Alaska, scientists analyzed sound data, collected […]
NEWPORT, Ore. – Researchers can now determine the age and sex of living beluga whales in Alaska’s Cook Inlet thanks to a new DNA-based technique that uses information from small samples of skin tissue. Accurate age estimates are vital to conservation efforts for Cook Inlet belugas, which were listed as endangered following a significant population decline in […]