2012 inlet beluga count basically flat

Kristen Nelson

Petroleum News

The summer 2012 count of Cook Inlet beluga whales showed an estimated 312 animals, up almost 10 percent from the 2011 count of 284.

The National Marine Fisheries Service, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said Jan. 3 in releasing the count that it was “a small, but not scientifically significant increase over last year.”

The 2011 count was a drop of almost 17 percent from the 2010 count of 340, with the range of counts in the past decade from 278 to 375.

NMFS said the overall population trend for the 10-year period is an annual average decline of 0.6 percent.

When the 2011 count was released in early 2012 the agency said the count reflected a 1.1 percent decline in whale population over a 10-year period.

Scientists said the 2012 survey did have one unusual finding: whales venturing into relatively new waters.

“A group of belugas was observed just offshore of West Foreland swimming north into upper Cook Inlet,” Kim Selden, a NOAA scientists and chief scientist on the survey said in the news release on the 2012 count.

“Beluga whales have not been observed in this area during our survey since 2001.

“This group of 12 to 21 whales then moved into Trading Bay where they remained for the duration of the survey, not far from the mouth of the McArthur River. Groups of this size have not been seen during our beluga whale surveys south of North Foreland since 1995.”

The surveys are done in June by scientists with NOAA’s Alaska Fisheries Science Center from a small plane with bubble windows. Scientists look for and count beluga whales and make video recordings of the whole groups. The video and observer counts are analyzed to produce the annual estimate.

Over the past 10 years the count has varied from a high of 375 in 2007 and 2008 to a low to 278 in 2005.

A steep drop in numbers, from 653 in the 1994 count, ended in 1999 with restrictions on subsistence whale hunting.

In 2008 the agency listed the whales as endangered under the Endangered Species Act and NOAA designated critical habitat for the Cook Inlet beluga whale population in 2011. The agency is developing a recovery plan for Cook Inlet beluga whales.