Polar Bears International and Explore.org are once again offering their popular beluga whale live cams, which capture these chatty, melon-headed marine mammals in all their glory.
As of this week and until the end of August, you can watch and listen to tens of thousands of beluga whales as they make their annual migration to Hudson Bay and the Churchill River in Canada.
Scientists aboard a special “beluga boat” named Delphi are now cruising along the Churchill River and capture video footage and sound recordings of belugas as they swim, communicate, raise their young and enjoy the relative safety from predators like orcas.
The vessel is equipped with two cameras, one underwater and one on-deck, that capture different perspectives of these social marine mammals' summer vacation destination. Of the roughly 150,000 beluga whales in the world, an estimated 57,000 individuals spend summers here.
The ship also has a hydrophone to record the belugas’ various chirps, whistles, squeaks and other sounds that have earned them the nickname “canaries of the sea.”
“You’ll see all these family pods swimming amongst each other,” Alysa McCall, staff scientist and director of conservation outreach for Polar Bears International, told Popular Science. “They like to follow the boat in the wake. We go super slow, and the belugas will just kind of tag along, and they like to go in front of a camera. They bring their babies up to the camera and they just talk all day.”
So, from the comfort of your home, why not tune into the Beluga BoatCams?
If you're unlucky with your timing, check out the 2023 BelugaCam Highlights Reel