page_title: Beluga whale
section_title: Migration
hierarchical_section_title: Beluga whale / Distribution / Migration
caption_attribution_description: English: Title: The Canadian field-naturalist Identifier: canadianfieldnat1980otta (find matches) Year: 1980 (1980s) Authors: Ottawa Field-Naturalists' Club Subjects: Publisher: Ottawa, Ottawa Field-Naturalists' Club Contributing Library: Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library Digitizing Sponsor: Harvard University, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Ernst Mayr Library View Book Page: Book Viewer About This Book: Catalog Entry View All Images: All Images From Book Click here to view book online to see this illustration in context in a browseable online version of this book. Text Appearing Before Image: 1980 Reeves and Katona: White Whale Records 241 Text Appearing After Image: Figure 2. Young Beluga seen in Great South Bay, Long Island, March-July 1979. Photo by Frank Keating, Newsday. The behavior described for the Great South Bay animal(s) was strikingly similar to that described for the New Jersey Beluga, and it is tempting to speculate that the same individual survived the winter and reap- peared inshore in spring, perhaps following spawning fish. Sighting reports for the Jones Beach area con- tinued through spring and summer, some of them documented by photos. A Beluga was seen by fisher- men in this area as late as mid-October 1979(F. Keat- ing, Newsday, Long Island, New York, personal communication). The sedentary behavior of the New Jersey and Long Island Beluga(s) is reminiscent of Sergeant's (1978) observations made in a small basin near the coast of Newfoundland, where a &quot;stray&quot; adult Beluga remained for an entire summer and fall. As he put it: &quot;The unwillingness of this animal to explore its environment is remarkable; its semi-enclosed location evidently gave it some form of security.&quot; Several authors, among them Fisher and Sergeant (1954) and Mercer (1973), have written that White Whales are distributed south to New Jersey, basing their statements on Anderson's (1946) designation of Atlantic City as the southern limit of the species' known occurrence along this coast. Anderson's report apparently stemmed from a misreading of True (1910), in which a description is given of two White Whales held in a tank at Atlantic City in 1908. True did not make clear where the whales had been cap- tured, although it would have been reasonable to assume that, like many of their species taken for cap- tive display since at least as early as 1861 (Wyman 1863; Lee 1878), they were caught and transported from subarctic waters of eastern Canada. One of us (Reeves) examined the skull of one of these two cap- tive individuals, which is catalogued as USNM 238104 in the Smithsonian Institution. Although the label tied to the specimen says &quot;from Atlantic City.&quot; museum curatorial records show that the whale actu- ally was collected in the St. Lawrence River by A. Minor Renshaw. Note About Images Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original work.
context_page_description: The beluga whale is an Arctic and sub-Arctic cetacean. It is one of two members of the family Monodontidae, along with the narwhal, and the only member of the genus Delphinapterus. It is also known as the white whale, as it is the only cetacean of this colour; the sea canary, due to its high-pitched calls; and the melonhead, though that more commonly refers to the melon-headed whale, which is an oceanic dolphin.
  The beluga is adapted to life in the Arctic, so it has anatomical and physiological characteristics that differentiate it from other cetaceans. Amongst these are its all-white colour and the absence of a dorsal fin, which allows it to swim under ice with ease. It possesses a distinctive protuberance at the front of its head which houses an echolocation organ called the melon, which in this species is large and deformable. The beluga's body size is between that of a dolphin and a true whale, with males growing up to 5.5 m long and weighing up to 1,600 kg. This whale has a stocky body. Like many cetaceans, a large percentage of its weight is blubber.
context_section_description: Belugas have a seasonal migratory pattern. Migration patterns are passed from parents to offspring. Some travel as far as 6,000 kilometres per year. When the summer sites become blocked with ice during the autumn, they move to spend the winter in the open sea alongside the pack ice or in areas covered with ice, surviving by using polynyas to surface and breathe. In summer after the sheet ice has melted, they move to coastal areas with shallower water (1–3 m deep), although sometimes they migrate towards deeper waters (>800 m). In the summer, they occupy estuaries and the waters of the continental shelf, and, on occasion, they even swim up the rivers. A number of incidents have been reported where groups or individuals have been found hundreds or even thousands of kilometres from the ocean. One such example comes from June 9, 2006, when a young beluga carcass was found in the Tanana River near Fairbanks in central Alaska, nearly 1,700 km (1,100 mi) from the nearest ocean habitat. Belugas sometimes follow migrating fish, leading Alaska state biologist Tom Seaton to speculate it had followed migrating salmon up the river at some point in the previous autumn. The rivers they most often travel up include: the Northern Dvina, the Mezen, the Pechora, the Ob and the Yenisei in Asia; the Yukon and the Kuskokwim in Alaska, and the Saint Lawrence in Canada. Spending time in a river has been shown to stimulate an animal's metabolism and facilitates the seasonal renewal of the epidermal layer. In addition, the rivers represent a safe haven for newborn calves where they will not be preyed upon by killer whales. Calves often return to the same estuary as their mother in the summer, meeting her sometimes even after becoming fully mature. However, not all beluga whale populations summer in estuaries. Belugas from the Beaufort Sea stock were found to summer along the Eastern Beaufort Sea shelf, Amundsen Gulf and slope regions north and west of Banks Island, in addition to core areas in the Mackenzie River Estuary. Male belugas have been observed summering in deeper waters along Viscount Melville Sound, in depths of up to 600 meters. The bulk of Eastern Chukchi Sea belugas summer over Barrow canyon.
  The migration season is relatively predictable, as it is basically determined by the amount of daylight and not by other variable physical or biological factors, such as the condition of the sea ice. Vagrants may travel further south to areas such as Irish and Scottish waters, the islands of Orkney and Hebrides, and to Japanese waters. There had been several vagrant individuals that have demonstrated seasonal residencies at Volcano Bay, and a unique whale were used to return annually to areas adjacent to Shibetsu in Nemuro Strait in the 2000s. On rarer occasions, individuals of vagrancy can reach the Korean Peninsula. A few other individuals have been confirmed to return to the coasts of Hokkaido, and one particular individual became a resident in brackish waters of Lake Notoro since in 2014.
  Some populations are not migratory and certain resident groups will stay in well-defined areas, such as in Cook Inlet, the estuary of the Saint Lawrence River and Cumberland Sound. The population in Cook Inlet stays in the waters furthest inside the inlet during the summer until the end of autumn. Then during the winter, they disperse to the deeper water in the center of the inlet, but without completely leaving it.
  In April, the animals that spend the winter in the center and southwest of the Bering Sea move to the north coast of Alaska and the east coast of Russia. The populations living in the Ungava Bay and the eastern and western sides of Hudson Bay overwinter together beneath the sea ice in Hudson Strait. Whales in James Bay that spend winter months within the basin, could be a distinct group from those in Hudson Bay. The populations of the White Sea, the Kara Sea and the Laptev Sea overwinter in the Barents Sea. In the spring, the groups separate and migrate to their respective summer sites.
caption: Young Beluga seen in Great South Bay, Long Island, March–July 1979
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