Some of these disorders may be brought on or compounded by toxic contamination.Beluga whales trapped by ice are often susceptible to predation by polar bears, starvation, and suffocation.© 2020 SeaWorld Parks & Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved.SeaWorld and Busch Gardens Conservation Fund. These estimations are most accurate in young whales, before the tooth's pulp cavity fills in. Support for the GLG/2 deposition rate hypothesis has a significant bearing on the research community's understanding and interpretation of the overall life history parameters of beluga whales.Studies incorporating both wild and zoological populations of beluga whales suggest that their average lifespan is on the order of 30 to 35 years.As a beluga whale ages, it periodically produces growth layer groups of dental material. Beluga whales are large, white cetaceans that share a taxonomic family with narwhals.They are also known as “white whales,” “melonheads,” “sea canaries,” “belugas,” and “canary whales.” These social whales live in Artic and sub-Arctic oceans, and are adapted to life in frigid waters. Age can be estimated by examining a sliced section of tooth and counting these layers. ... An adult beluga can eat 3% of its body weight per day. Taken with tigers? Crazy about roller coasters? Low birth rates in the St. Lawrence River may be linked to industrial pollution.Oil exploration and hydroelectric development cause significant alterations to beluga habitats.As in any animal populations a variety of diseases can be responsible for beluga whale deaths. Along with Friends of the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge, we helped fund and launch the Anchorage Coastal Beluga Survey in 2008 and in 2017 we helped create the popular annual ‘Belugas Count!’ program to engage and inform local residents about Cook Inlet belugas.The potential impacts Defenders and others are monitoring include: noise and physical habitat changes associated with construction projects and oil and gas development; changes in prey availability, changes in habitat due to climate change, predation by killer whales, pollution and contaminants and vessel traffic.Beluga whales are distributed throughout seasonally ice-covered arctic and subarctic waters. I’m a good swimmer too—I can dive for 25 minutes to depths up to 800 meters.The word “beluga” comes from the word “bielo” which means white in Russian. All Belugas eat fish, but some will also eat small invertebrates like shrimp, snails, crabs, or octopi. Diets of subpopulations are regionally and seasonally influenced. Beluga Whales generally hunt in one of two ways. Periodic messages. A beluga whale consumes approximately 27 kilograms (60 lbs) of food per day. They feed on salmon, eulachon, tomcod, smelt, char, rainbow sole, whitefish, saffron and arctic cod, herring, shrimp, mussels, octopus, crabs, clams, mussels, snails and sandworms.Our Board of Directors and President’s Circle are authorizing an emergency 3x match: Pitch in by September 30 and every dollar you give will be matched 2-for-1 up to $150,000 to protect predator species and other wildlife to restore balance to nature!The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers published a final environmental impact statement for the proposed Pebble mine that fails to address the concerns of scientists.97% of our funds go towards program and support services, with only 3% going towards fundraising.Your gift matched 2-for-1 to protect wildlife!Groups call out Army Corps for negligent review of Pebble’s faulty mine proposal. The grey steadily lightens as they grow up - reaching their permanent white color by the age of seven for females and nine for males. From 1868 to 1911, Scottish and American whalers took more than 20,000 belugas in Lancaster Sound and Davis Strait.In the 1930s belugas along the St. Lawrence River were killed by fishermen, who believed the whales were a threat to the fishing industry.Arctic natives still subsistence hunt belugas for food and other raw materials. These toxic chemicals may cause a decline in a beluga's immune system, making it susceptible to pneumonia, ulcers, cysts, lesions, tumors, and bacterial infections. The diet of a beluga whale is the most diverse of any of the smaller whales.