Mammals
Beluga Whale
Delphinapterus leucas · also called white whale, sea canary, melonhead
The beluga is the small white whale of the Arctic — a rounded, sociable, endlessly vocal animal that swims among the ice floes, gathers by the thousand in river mouths each summer, and can pull faces and turn its head like almost no other whale.
Overview
Belugas live in the cold seas around the top of the world — the coasts and continental shelves of Canada, Alaska, Greenland, Svalbard, and Arctic Russia. In winter they associate with the edge of the pack ice, surviving in cracks and openings (and sometimes becoming trapped when the ice closes). In summer many move into shallow river estuaries, where warmer, fresher water helps them moult their skin and where calves can be raised in relative safety. They are highly social, living in pods of a few to a few dozen that merge into aggregations of hundreds or thousands.
Built for the ice
- No dorsal fin. A ridge of tough skin replaces it, so the beluga can swim tight under ice and surface in narrow leads without injury, and loses less heat.
- An unfused neck. The beluga can turn its head to look around and to catch fish hiding in crevices and on the bottom.
- Reverse gear. It is one of the very few whales that can swim backwards.
- A thick blubber layer, up to 15 cm, and white colouration that camouflages it against ice from below.
The most vocal whale
The beluga’s nickname, “sea canary,” comes from its remarkable voice. It produces clicks for echolocation and an enormous variety of whistles, chirps, squeaks, and moans for communication, easily heard through a boat’s hull. It also uses its flexible melon — the fatty forehead — expressively, changing its shape during both hunting and social interaction.
Diet
Belugas are opportunistic predators of fish (cod, capelin, herring, salmon), squid, octopus, and bottom invertebrates such as crabs, shrimp, and worms, hunting cooperatively at times and using their sonar to find prey in dark or turbid water and under ice.
Reproduction
Belugas mate in spring and, after a 14–15 month pregnancy, a female gives birth to a single dark-grey calf that nurses for two years or more. Calving intervals are about three years, and the whales are slow to mature, so populations recover slowly from losses.
Status
Globally the beluga is Least Concern, but the picture is uneven. Large healthy populations exist in parts of the Canadian and Russian Arctic, while some small, isolated subpopulations are Critically Endangered — notably Alaska’s Cook Inlet belugas (a few hundred animals) and Canada’s St Lawrence Estuary belugas, long exposed to industrial pollutants. Hunting, shipping and industrial noise, contamination, and a fast-changing Arctic are the main pressures.
Beluga Whale: common questions
Why is the beluga so flexible compared with other whales?
Two features. Its neck vertebrae are not fused together, as they are in most whales, so a beluga can nod, shake, and turn its head — useful for hunting fish among ice floes and on the seabed. And it can swim backwards, which almost no other cetacean can do. Combined with its lack of a dorsal fin (so it can surface in narrow cracks in the ice without being cut) and its ability to move its lips and forehead expressively, this makes the beluga unusually manoeuvrable and communicative.
Why was the beluga called the "sea canary"?
Whalers gave it the name because of its extraordinary vocal repertoire, which carries clearly through the hull of a boat and even into the air. Belugas produce a huge range of clicks, whistles, squeals, chirps, trills, and mooing sounds, both for echolocation and for social communication, and they are among the most talkative of all whales. One captive beluga even learned to mimic the rhythm and pitch of human speech well enough to be mistaken for a person.
Can a beluga really change the shape of its head?
Yes. The rounded forehead, called the melon, is a mass of fatty tissue that the beluga uses to focus the sound beam it produces for echolocation, and it can squeeze, stretch, and shift the melon into different shapes using muscles and air sinuses. Observers also see belugas altering the melon during social interactions, and it may function as a visual signal alongside the sounds.
Are beluga populations in trouble?
The species as a whole is Least Concern, with around 150,000 animals, but several isolated subpopulations are Critically Endangered. The belugas of Cook Inlet in Alaska number only a few hundred and have not recovered despite protection, and the St Lawrence Estuary population in Canada is small and burdened by decades of industrial pollution. Threats include hunting, habitat disturbance from shipping and oil and gas activity, chemical contamination, prey depletion, and the rapid loss and change of Arctic sea ice.