It is time to go Belugaing

Perched on the rocks at Beluga Point, I scan the waters of Cook Inlet’s Turnagain Arm looking for any signs of beluga or other marine mammals.  My clipboard with the “Report of Beluga Sighting!” form is wedged in a crack in the rocks out of the stiff breeze that moves constantly across the Point’s rock face.  

The two-hour session yields negative results.  Regardless of the lack of sightings, I practice observation skills that have been dormant since the end of the official count last autumn.  My partner and I see nary a beluga or other marine mammal.  None-the-less, upon returning home, I file the report through the on-line link.  Even a negative report provides one more piece data that may help solve the mystery of why the Cook Inlet Distinct Population Segment (DPS) of beluga whales have not recovered as expected.  

On that day, April 29, most of the action centers near the head of the Arm where the 20-Mile River enters the Inlet.  There, the eulachon (aka hooligan, smelt, and candlefish) ran the gauntlet of marine mammals, birds, and dip netters attracted by the prospect of a meal to enter the river to spawn.  Beluga have been reported and recorded there.

Usually, the arrival of a solitary whale or a pod causes rejoicing among coastal residents.  Summer arrives shortly after sighting that first fluke or breech. But this year, a sense of unease accompanies the first sighting.  Daily reports bring news of deaths of whales along the migration routes.  Alaska alone accounted for dozens, although none were Cook Inlet beluga.. On the day I mountain goat into position among the rock at Beluga Point, the stranding of a young humpback whale farther up the Arm caused a stir of concern and curiosity.  Scientists took tissue samples for a necropsy, a kind of marine mammal post mortem.  This stranding was one of an unexpectedly high many during the annual migrations of various .  They are all part a government-declared “unusual mortality event “or “UME” thst focuses expertise and resources on trying to figure identify the cause. In the vernacular of public administration, any circumstance worthy of attention must be rendered into an acronym or it may escape notice.  This year, they take inevitable notice, acronym or not.   

It is time now time to “go belugaing”   to participate as a citizen scientist with the Beluga Whale Alliance and other groups in this autumn’s expanded count of the Cook Inlet beluga whales.  I can’t help but feel this season’s count takes on a greater sense of urgency.  Something is happening in the ocean.  I am not sure which label applies, it just seems that we are approaching a critical point in ocean conditions that needs for me to be involved.  For me, that is participating in the Count.