Beluga Season is Here!
Greetings CIBW fans. We hope everyone has been enjoying their summer. It is August already and that means that beluga season has arrived. Yes, the belugas are around all year but August means that we should start seeing them regularly in Turnagain Arm. Reports of belugas have started to trickle in along Turnagain Arm and Knik Arm. Check out the 2019 sightings map to see where the belugas are being seen on our website, and get out there and see these wonderful animals for yourself (and report your sightings on the website- it helps us plan our research trips and all results are shared with the public, colleagues, and agencies). Thank you to everyone who has been reporting their sightings to us, keep up the good work and keep those reports and photographs coming in.
The CIBW Photo-ID Project Team is still in full swing with our field season, which began in May and will go until October. We had some great encounters with belugas this summer along the Susitna River Delta and we are now seasonally expanding our surveys into Knik Arm, Eagle Bay, Chickaloon Bay, and Turnagain Arm. We hope to see you out there along the Seward Highway during one of our surveys.
If you want to participate in monitoring belugas, you can contact the newly formed Alaska Beluga Monitoring Partnership citizen science program. They will be conducting citizen science monitoring programs along Turnagain Arm, Ship Creek and the Kenai River. Also, the third annual Belugas Count! Event is coming up. The CIBW Photo-ID Team will be at Bird Point on September 21, 2018 between 10 am and 2 pm for the Belugas Count Event! So come and join us! If you have photos to share, please bring them on a thumb drive to the event at the zoo afterwards, or upload them on our website. Check out the details below.
Happy Beluga Viewing!
The CIBW Photo-ID Project Team