Alaska Beluga Monitoring Partnership

There are no words to truly thank all of you that got out there and monitored belugas this fall. These are hard times and yet we still managed to pull off a monitoring season. Thanks to you! If you weren't able to monitor, we still thank you for your continued support. Completing monitoring sessions, reporting opportunistic sightings, and spreading the word about Cook Inlet beluga conservation are all crucial parts of our mission and help strengthen the work that we do together. 

There are many reasons that prevented people from monitoring this year and we absolutely understand. For those who attended an orientation but were prevented from undergoing the required field training, our current plan is to get you trained up next spring! Thank you for your patience and we look forward to monitoring belugas with you in the future. Stay tuned this winter for updates on the spring 2021 season and a report of our monitoring results from fall 2019 and 2020. Also, check your emails for a volunteer survey so you can let us know how your season went, why monitoring wasn't a possibility for you this year, and/or any feedback you have to make the AKBMP program better.

What We Accomplished:

From August 15th - November 15th, we monitored 174 sessions and saw belugas during 83 of those sessions. Great work, everyone! Of course, those numbers come from the currently entered data to our online database. If you still have data that needs to be entered please do that as soon as you can! What an incredible accomplishment! Thank you for taking time out of your life to get out there rain, shine, wind, and snow to monitor our sites. We know that sometimes it is cold or you have monitored several sessions without seeing a single whale. ALL of your efforts are appreciated and ALL data is important, whales or not. Below is our current sighting log updated on November 17th.