Skip to content
All news
  • All news
  • About whales & dolphins
  • Corporates
  • Create healthy seas
  • End captivity
  • Green Whale
  • Prevent deaths in nets
  • Scottish Dolphin Centre
  • Stop whaling
  • Stranding
  • Whale watching

WDC exposes failure of Government scheme to protect whales and dolphins from net deaths

Following our investigations, we have revealed that a UK Government scheme to protect whales and...

First cases of bird flu in dolphins discovered in the UK

The UK Government has announced that two dolphins and a harbour porpoise have died from...
Kiska the orca

Kiska the ‘world’s loneliest whale’ dies at Canadian theme park

Kiska, dubbed the loneliest whale in the world, has died at Marineland, a zoo and...

Man charged in US for harassing whale

Police in the US are investigating reports of a man known as 'Dolphin Dave' repeatedly...

Belugas Of Cook Inlet Continue To Decline

The beluga population of Cook Inlet, Alaska – recently re-listed as endangered – has fallen to its lowest level in nearly 20 years. So say the estimates arrived at in the 2011 survey of these remarkable ‘white whales’, planned and organised by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The survey in June last year found just 284 belugas compared to a count of 340 in 2010. The first NOAA survey in 1993 counted 653.

Federal biologists are advising caution over the latest figures as the number of beluga deaths reported during 2011 was much lower than normal. It may be that differing survey conditions and the whales spending more time underwater feeding during June skewed the figures.

The belugas’ decline has been blamed on various factors. Subsistence hunting by native populations led to a ban on hunting belugas in 1999. However the whales’ population has not recovered as expected since then, casting suspicion on pollution in Anchorage’s waste water.

More on belugas here.