Defenders Magazine

Alaska's Vanishing Whales

Beluga whales are disappearing from Alaska's Cook Inlet, and no one is sure why.

By Nick Jans

© Kevin Schafer/Seapics.com

With their prominent, domed foreheads and
friendly looking facial features, belugas are a
distinctive presence in the cold waters of the
far north.

The Cessna 182 banks east, flying low along the Alaska coast. Off our left wing lies Anchorage, the state's largest city—a patchwork of suburban developments, big-box malls, wooded areas, industrial parks and hillside trophy homes spreading outward from a high-rise downtown. To our right, behind us and ahead stretches Cook Inlet, a multi-lobed, 8,000-square-mile embayment comprising one of Alaska's richest and most dynamic coastal ecosystems.

As we round Point McHugh and head up Turnagain Arm, a major branch of Cook Inlet notorious for its powerful tides, the snow-dusted Chugach Mountains crowd close to water's edge and development fades. My eyes are fixed on the silt-laden, roiling waters below. "They'll look like a breaking wave," says Charlie Pike, a pilot with three decades of local flying experience. "Just a quick flash of white."

We're searching for Cook Inlet beluga whales, a unique group of the white whales whose numbers have declined so dramatically in the past two decades that biologists fear they may soon disappear. According to current surveys, fewer than 300 Cook Inlet belugas remain. Experts aren't sure why this genetically distinct group of belugas is declining, and this uncertainty has helped feed a controversy over how the government should respond.

Away from this controversy, Pike and I are faced with a daunting task: catching a glimpse of a few white needles in a liquid, murky haystack that spills over the horizon, all in the course of an hour's flight. Like the water below, the lead we're following is growing colder by the moment, but it's all we've got: a week-old report that a pod of about 20 whales was spotted in upper Turnagain Arm, hunting the tidal currents that boil close against the rocky shore. We hope they're still in the area, surfing and diving as they forage for prey—an eclectic mix that may include salmon, shrimp, herring and octopus.

Belugas are modest in size compared to some of their leviathan brethren: males range up to 15 feet in length and 3,000 pounds; females are somewhat smaller. Found only in the northern hemisphere, they are most common in the frigid waters bordering Scandinavia, Russia, Canada and Alaska—but isolated groups range as far south as the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Named for their skin color (in Russian, beluga means "great white"), these social, extremely vocal whales—dubbed "sea canaries" by 19th century mariners—travel in pods that sometimes number in the thousands.

Belugas are powerful, agile swimmers, and unlike other whales, are able to turn their necks. Their mouths seem fixed in a friendly, quizzical grin below a prominent domed forehead. In spring and summer these toothed whales frequent shallow coastal waters, often congregating at river mouths to intercept schools of migrating fish. Birthing and nursery areas also lie close to shore. In autumn, some populations migrate hundreds of miles offshore, and winter among floes of drifting pack ice. Worldwide, beluga numbers are estimated between 100,000 and 150,000.

Cook Inlet belugas are the southernmost and by far the smallest of Alaska's five beluga populations, separated from the others by the sweep of the Alaska Peninsula—a geographic barrier that has resulted in a unique genetic makeup. Like other belugas, these have long been hunted by subsistence users for their meat and blubber, but they have escaped the ravages of commercial whaling in the past two centuries due to their speed and relatively small size. Besides humans, their only other known predators are killer whales.

The advent of motor boats and modern rifles, as well as the growth of Anchorage (often called Alaska's largest native village), resulted in increasing pressure on Cook Inlet belugas in the latter half of the 20th century. The native subsistence take, averaging between 40 and 70 animals a year during the 1980s and 1990s, was identified by federal scientists as the primary cause of depressed beluga numbers. As the decline of Cook Inlet belugas became more apparent, native groups in 1999 voluntarily curtailed their hunting until formal protections could be enacted. Conservationists hoped this action would result in a rebound of the Cook Inlet population. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened: beluga numbers have continued to go down, at a rate of 4.1 percent per year, according to National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) biologist Barb Mahoney.

The belugas' tendency to feed and rear young in shallow coastal waters places them at special risk in Cook Inlet; these are the areas most heavily impacted by human development. The fact that they often congregate in large numbers makes them especially vulnerable to catastrophic events such as oil spills, virulent diseases or strandings. But exactly why these belugas are continuing to decline "is the grand, unanswered question," says Randy Virgin, head of the Alaska Center for the Environment.

As scientists search for answers to this question, conservation groups are seeking increased protection for the belugas. In 2005, more than a dozen local and national groups (including Defenders of Wildlife) petitioned the federal government to strengthen the animals' status of "depleted" under the Marine Mammal Protection Act to the more stringent designation of "endangered" under the Endangered Species Act. In November 2006, NMFS (which has jurisdiction over belugas) released a 92-page "status review" of the belugas, which allows that an endangered listing "may" indeed be justified.

"No question they're endangered," says Bob Shavelson of Cook Inletkeeper, a Homer, Alaska-based conservation group. "The science and data regarding their decline are overwhelming." He welcomes the NMFS status review as a positive step toward an endangered listing. "I don't see how they can't be listed," echoes a federal biologist, who asks not to be quoted by name, due to agency politics. Their opinion was underscored by the World Conservation Union's 2006 red-listing of the Cook Inlet beluga as "critically endangered," just one rung above "extinct."

Civic and business leaders, however, are opposed to increased federal protection. "While of course we're concerned, we feel more study is in order," says Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. Bill Popp, the oil, gas and mining liaison for the neighboring municipality of Kenai, says, "there is no solid, scientific evidence that an endangered status for Cook Inlet's belugas is warranted."

With large chunks of vital beluga feeding, mating and nursery habitat lying near Alaska's largest city and much of its industry, these officials express concern that an endangered species listing could severely impact a number of major projects. These include expansion of Anchorage port facilities, a proposed two-mile bridge spanning Knik Arm (one of the infamous Alaskan "bridges to nowhere"), the development of the enormous Chuitna coal deposit and ongoing offshore gas and oil drilling near Kenai.

An endangered listing could also force Anchorage to address the issue of its own massive sewage discharge into Cook Inlet. Anchorage and surrounding cities currently release 65 million gallons of wastewater per day into Cook Inlet—sewage that goes through only one round of treatment, rather than the two or three rounds that are standard in most of the lower 48. Mayor Begich maintains that the flushing action of the inlet's tides safely disperses the effluent and that there is no research indicating that Anchorage's wastewater—or any of the city's projects—is having a negative impact on the whales.

"We value our belugas," says Begich. "If research clearly demonstrates that they're being affected by our activities, we're willing to respond appropriately." But, pointing to the $40 million cost of building additional sewage treatment facilities, he adds, "we don't feel we should shoulder huge financial burden and restriction without that clear evidence."

"Of course there's no evidence," counters Shavelson. "No research—zero—has been done regarding the effects of human activity on belugas in Cook Inlet." He points out that municipal wastewater alone carries not just heavy metals, but antibiotics, hormones and various industrial chemicals. When that is added to spills associated with offshore oil rigs, chemical-contaminated snowmelt and runoff and aviation-associated pollution from Anchorage International Airport, points out Virgin, the result is a potentially "toxic gumbo" in which the whales must swim.

Noise is a separate issue. Belugas, which rely on echolocation to navigate, communicate and find prey, may be extremely sensitive to acoustic disturbances. Cook Inlet pulses with ever-increasing waves of man-made sound: boat traffic, dredging operations, drilling rigs and underwater explosions used for seismic testing, to name a few. The proposed Anchorage port expansion and Knik Arm bridge would add yet more commotion to the underwater soundscape.

Begich, Popp and others have taken concerted action to protect their interests. In the late 1990s, Anchorage and two neighboring boroughs intervened in a federal lawsuit that successfully opposed an endangered listing of the inlet's belugas. And last fall, Kenai and the Knik Arm Bridge and Toll Authority contributed as much as $75,000 to a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm. Conservationists maintain these funds were earmarked solely to fight an endangered listing of the whales, but Popp offers this clarification: "We're seeking deferment of an endangered listing and several million federal dollars to fund further study."

Ironically, the lack of key research is one point on which both sides agree, and want rectified. But conservationists feel there's more than enough evidence for an immediate endangered listing—and meanwhile, for NMFS to invoke protections provided for under the Marine Mammal Protection Act. "Why not err on the side of caution?" says Shavelson. "We've got a dwindling number of whales and no idea what's going on. We should extend full protection while we do some study and give them every opportunity for recovery. If whale numbers increase and all's well, they can be de-listed."

As we fly over Cook Inlet, I lean against the Cessna's windows, staring down as if I could will a handful of belugas into being. I watch the tide come in at Turnagain Arm, creating white-capped rips against the rocky shore. As we near the upper end of the arm, I reluctantly ask Pike to turn back—our time has run out.

But as we're leveling off, his voice crackles through the headset. "There!" he says, pointing to the water. I see one flicker of white, then another. We bank in a dizzying spiral as we count: Four, six, nine…perhaps a dozen whales, their fluked tails and domed heads distinct as they surface to breathe, then dive. One by one, they rise and fall, as they have for thousands of years, swimming against the cold, ever-pouring tide.