Cook Inlet Beluga Whales — the Canaries of the Sea

ENSURING Endangered BELUGA WHALES HAVE ENOUGH FOOD AND CLEAN WATER TO THRIVE

THE ISSUE

Cook Inlet beluga whales — known as the “canaries of the sea” because of the many different sounds they make — are critically endangered. Once a valuable part of the regional Alaska Native subsistence diet in Cook Inlet (Tikahtnu in Dena’ina), the Cook Inlet beluga population experienced a population decline during the 1980s and 1990s. Since 1979, the population has declined 75 percent—from about 1,300 whales to around 300 today.

Following this rapid decline, the federal government designated the Cook Inlet beluga population as depleted under the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) in 2000, and endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 2008. The population has yet to recover.

The threats that belugas face are numerous, and even though some aquariums in the United States are focused on studying and rehabilitating belugas, the best way to support these beautiful mammals is to help them in the wild. The belugas living in Cook Inlet are separate and distinct from other beluga populations. Once they are gone from Cook Inlet, they are gone forever, making AWA’s efforts to bolster the population more critical than ever before.

AWA’s WORK TO RECOVER COOK INLET BELUGAS

AWA takes an ecosystem-level approach to protecting these iconic whales and has developed a three-pronged approach:

1. ENGAGE THE COMMUNITY: We engage the human community through our outreach and educational programs, as well as our partnership with the Alaska Beluga Monitoring Program (AKBMP) for community-based scientific monitoring. 

2. ENSURE BELUGAS HAVE ENOUGH FOOD: We address the regulatory system to ensure that belugas have enough food to eat, especially in the spring when they are at their skinniest.

3. KEEP COOK INLET CLEAN FOR BELUGAS: We ensure that Cook Inlet’s waters, where the belugas spend their entire lives, are not polluted to the point it impairs their health and reproductive potential.

We cannot help the endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales without the support of generous donors like you. Consider a donation to keep our efforts going to save belugas for future generations to enjoy. Learn more about other ways you can support AWA’s work here.

Endangered species like Cook Inlet beluga whales can’t swim up to a meeting hall and advocate for themselves. Humans, as an important part of the Cook Inlet ecosystem, have a responsibility to be a Voice for Wildlife for them. And to be effective advocates, we need to be educated and passionate about the issues affecting belugas.

Many Alaskans living around Cook Inlet have never seen a beluga whale, and it can be difficult to develop a passion to protect them if you don’t have personal experiences with them. So, AWA has created several ways to help people view endangered Cook Inlet beluga whales, focusing our efforts on whales when they come into the Kenai and Kasilof rivers. 

Below are three ways you can engage with Cook Inlet beluga whales to better advocate for their continued survival. We provide these opportunities at no cost to you, but if you would like to help us keep these programs running, you can donate here.

• Sign up for beluga text alerts in the Kenai and Kasilof rivers. We monitor the Kenai and Kasilof for belugas, and send out text alerts when we learn that they’re in the rivers. The alerts are free and easy to subscribe to: simply text the word “BELUGA” to 1-833-541-0408. Text alerts are made possible by a grant from the Kenai Peninsula Foundation, an Affiliate of The Alaska Community Foundation. Terms and conditions apply, click here for details.

  • If you have previously unsubscribed and are trying to sign back up, you will need to text the word “unstop” instead of beluga.

  • If you spot belugas in the river and we haven’t sent an alert, let us know! You can text us your observation to the same number we sent out alerts from (1-833-541-0408). Tell us when you saw the belugas and on which camera, and we’ll spread the news.
    

• Become a volunteer monitor with Alaska Beluga Monitoring Partnership (AKBMP). AWA is one of the co-founders of AKBMP. Now a NOAA-led Program, AKBMP trains community members on how to become citizen scientists who monitor and collect data about Cook Inlet beluga whales. The data is then used to inform management decisions.

  • There are multiple partners and monitoring sites around Cook Inlet. AWA co-hosts the Kenai River and Kasilof River sites.

  • If you’d like to become a trained beluga monitor, head to AKMP’s volunteer page.

• Watch our two BelugaCAM livestreams on the Kenai River. You can watch for belugas from the comfort of your own home…or anywhere with your cell phone!

  • Check out the live streams below, or on YouTube!

Cook Inlet beluga whales depend on seasonal runs of anadromous fish for their food, especially eulachon (also known as hooligan) in the spring and salmon in the summer. Belugas must eat a lot of these oil-rich fish to build up enough blubber to get through winter when food is scarce. Having robust energy reserves is especially important for females who are nursing a young calf all winter.

NOAA has identified “reduction in prey” as a threat to Cook Inlet belugas, and recent scientific publications have concluded that if these belugas have enough food, they can better withstand the other threats they face. With ample food, the population’s abundance could also increase by improving their low reproductive rates.  

Below are some ways AWA has been working to ensure Cook Inlet belugas have enough food to eat. If you would like to support our efforts, please donate here.

• AWA advocated on behalf of Cook Inlet belugas to the Board of Fisheries, and in 2024 we secured 100 more tons of eulachon for Cook Inlet belugas in the Susitna River in spring.

  • 100 tons of eulachon is enough food to feed the entire population of Cook Inlet belugas for 11 to 16 days. In spring, belugas are at their hungriest and the eulachon run can be a lifeline for them.

  • To our knowledge, this is the first time the Board of Fisheries made a decision in the best interest of sustaining a balanced ecosystem, rather than focusing on economic benefits of a fishery.

• AWA has submitted a proposal for funding to coordinate a multi-partner effort to conduct research in the Susitna River to determine the strength of the eulachon run.

• There have only been three studies of this eulachon run, most recently in 2016 by ADFG who only provided an indirect estimate of eulachon escapement for that one year. 

• If approved for funding, our research study will commence in the spring of 2025 and continue for three consecutive years. It will be the most robust study conducted to date.

• The study outcomes will provide critical information to both the Board of Fisheries and ADF&G for use in management decisions and determining allocative uses of these fish, which are important to sustaining the belugas.

Cook Inlet beluga whales don’t leave Cook Inlet; the waters are their full-time home. They’re exposed to whatever we dump into their environment, either by authorized/permitted discharges, such as from wastewater, oil and gas facilities, seafood processing, and cruise ships, or what is introduced into their waters through accidental spills, leaks, or runoff.

Water pollution from contaminants has been identified as a threat to belugas. Multiple studies have found pollutants/contaminants in Cook Inlet waters, in the prey of the belugas, and in the belugas themselves. There have also been recent scientific publications suggesting water pollution may be associated with compromised health and low reproductive rates of Cook Inlet belugas.

AWA has been working with partners to understand the extent and types of contaminants entering the belugas’ habitat. Many permits and studies only focus on localized areas of the Inlet, and don’t take a comprehensive look at the quantities, locations, or types of pollutants entering Cook Inlet. To our knowledge, no one has looked cumulatively across Cook Inlet at how belugas may be affected by all sources of pollution. That’s where AWA decided to start - what are the belugas being exposed to as they swim and forage in Cook Inlet? 

Below is information on our efforts to understand what pollutants Cook Inlet belugas are exposed to. Until we know more about the pollutants, we can’t effectively create a plan to reduce the most harmful ones. 

• AWA initiated a mapping project to depict some of the human-caused threats that belugas face throughout their range. One threat included on the map was the approximate location of many, but not all, of the permitted mixing zones where industrial activities are allowed to discharge contaminated water exceeding water quality standards. 

  • We presented our preliminary findings in January 2023 at the Alaska Marine Science Symposium.  We were surprised at just how much of the belugas’ habitat contains a known threat to belugas, even when we limited our assessment to human-caused, easily mappable threats. Read the abstract.

• AWA and one of our partners is currently conducting a deeper dive into details of all the permitted mixing zones in Cook Inlet.

• We are comparing which contaminants are allowed to be discharged across all the different mixing zones authorized in Cook Inlet, which contaminants the mixing zone permits require to be tested for in each discharge, and which contaminants have been documented in the waters of Cook Inlet, in beluga prey, as well as Cook Inlet belugas. 

• We presented our initial findings at the 2025 Alaska Marine Science Symposium. Preliminary results suggest that many of the contaminants found in the water, prey, and belugas are not the same contaminants that permits require polluters to test or monitor.

• In October 2023, AWA co-hosted the first-ever Cook Inlet Water Quality Summit, recognizing we had more questions than answers when it came to the status of the waters of Cook Inlet. Presentations covered what is known about the water, the health of fish and wildlife using the water, projects that may improve or reduce water quality, regulatory processes for the Clean Water Act, as well as a panel discussion involving policy makers from communities around Cook Inlet. We then hosted follow-up community discussions in 2024.

• To learn more about the Cook Inlet Water Quality Summit and see the full program book, along with copies of all the presentations, click here.

• AWA presented about Cook Inlet belugas. The abstract for that presentation is available on page 14 of the program book, and the full slide presentation starts on page 243.

• Donate to AWA! We all rely on grants, donations and other funding sources to continue our work.

• Sign up for text alerts by texting the word “BELUGA” to 1-833-541-0408. 

• Volunteer with the Alaska Beluga Monitoring Program! We rely on volunteers to monitor belugas across Cook Inlet.

• Help us keep an eye out for belugas in person or on the Beluga Cams. Let us know when you see them, and enter your sighting information into the Cook Inlet Beluga Whale Photo-ID website.

• Help educate people by sharing information about these endangered whales, especially with boaters and people close to the beaches or riverbanks

• Keep the Kenai River and Cook Inlet clean and safe for the whales and other marine life by cleaning up trash, plastics, rope, old netting, fishing line, gear, hooks, and anything else that marine life could ingest or become entangled with.

• Support AWA and the efforts of our partners to help this endangered population through activism.  Proposals and regulation changes often require public comments.  Subscribe to our newsletter to stay up to date and help us by speaking out for the whales!