This July 2016 photo provided by Explore.org shows the view of a beluga whale from a webcam gathered in the Churchill River in the Hudson Bay in Manitoba, Canada. Canadian researchers are turning to the internet to learn about the social behavior of thousands of beluga whales that migrate to Hudson Bay every year. (AP Photo)
Helena, Montana: The underwater webcam attached to Hayley Shephard's boat captures what at first appear to be green glowing orbs as she motors through an estuary in remote Canada. Then the orbs come into focus, revealing some of the more than 3,000 beluga whales that gather in the waters in and around Hudson Bay each summer.
The white whales, which resemble oversized dolphins, nuzzle and clown for the camera. They feel the lens with their teeth and blow bubbles at it. Sometimes they swim upside down for a better view.
That's what Stephen Petersen, head of conservation and research for Winnipeg's Assiniboine Park Zoo, and his wife, biologist Meg Hainstock, are looking for. Only when the whales turn upside down can the researchers determine their sex, which they need as they study the animals' social structure and behavior.
Its creators — Bozeman, Montana-based Polar Bears International and Explore.org, a project of the Annenberg Foundation — included a "snapshot" feature that allows viewers to take still shots of the feed. Petersen and Hainstock hope the result will be a trove of photographs of individual whales that will help them catalog the population as they try to answer questions about the animals' behavior.
For example, why do certain whales of a similar age and sex consistently gather at certain times or locations? What function do Hudson Bay's estuaries serve for these animals? Do beluga whales have a matriarchal social structure? Do certain whale groups' low numbers have a long-term effect on the rest of the population, such as the case with the population in Alaska's Cook Inlet, which is struggling as compared to the healthy Hudson Bay population?
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