The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) conducted aerial surveys of the beluga, Delphinapterus leucas, population in Cook Inlet, Alaska, 31 May 9 June 2011 as a continuum of surveys conducted since 1993. Eight of the days in 2011 resulted in complete surveys of the beluga habitat in the upper inlet (north of East Foreland and West Foreland); and the remaining two days included surveys of t...

Ethnohistoric records indicate that the economy of early historic Mackenzie Inuit was centred on the summer hunt for beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas). However, no systematic attempt has been made to quantify the dietary importance of beluga whales to earlier, precontact-period Mackenzie Inuit societies. This issue is addressed herein through analysis of over 2000 beluga bones recovered fro...

Cytochrome P450 1A1 (CYP1A1) is induced by exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and planar halogenated aromatic hydrocarbons (PHAHs) such as non-ortho polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). In this study, we examined CYP1A1 protein expression immunohistochemically in multiple organs of beluga whales from two locations in the Arctic and from the St. Lawrence estuary. These beluga popul...

The St. Lawrence Estuary (SLE) beluga are listed as threatened under the Species at Risk Act; a Recovery Strategy is defined, and their summer Critical Habitat has been identified. A review of the SLE beluga status (2007) concluded that the population was stable over the period 1988-2006. However, in recent years there has been an increase in reports of death of young-of-the-year, and an appare...

In this paper, we present an overview to programming with proofs in the reasoning framework, Beluga. Beluga supports the specification of formal systems given by axioms and inference rules within the logical framework LF. It also supports implementing proofs about formal systems as dependently typed recursive functions. What distinguishes Beluga from other frameworks is that it not only represe...

This paper presents a case study of an action selection system designed with adaptive techniques to create a virtual beluga aquarium exhibit. The beluga interactive exhibit uses a realistic 3D simulation system that allows the virtual belugas, in a natural pod context, to learn and alter their behavior based on contextual visitor interaction. Ethogram information on beluga behavior was incorpor...

Beluga whales, Delphinapterus leucas, have a graded call system; call types exist on a continuum making classification challenging. A description of vocalizations from the eastern Beaufort Sea beluga population during its spring migration are presented here, using both a non-parametric classification tree analysis (CART), and a Random Forest analysis. Twelve frequency and duration measurements ...

Counts of Growth Layer Groups (GLGs) in the dentin of marine mammal teeth are widely used as indicators of age. In most marine mammals, observations document that GLGs are deposited yearly, but in beluga whales, some studies have supported the view that two GLGs are deposited each year. Our understanding of beluga life-history differs substantially depending on assumptions regarding the timing ...

A software model estimating zones of impact on marine mammals around man-made noise [C. Erbe and D. M. Farmer, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 108, 1327-1331 (2000)] is applied to the case of icebreakers affecting beluga whales in the Beaufort Sea. Two types of noise emitted by the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Henry Larsen are analyzed: bubbler system noise and propeller cavitation noise. Effects on bel...