A class of young school children from Alaska found a dead beluga whale on the beach during a weekly field trip. The Winterberry Elementary School second graders came across the whale along the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail.   According to their teacher, Meg Eggleston, the children saw the whale moving its tail and were convinced the whale will be fine.   But the whale, dead for hours, had already begun to decompose. 

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The Port of Anchorage has been given the green light by the National Marine Fisheries Service to continue an expansion project in the habitat of critically endangered Cook Inlet Beluga Whales.

A Port of Anchorage construction project will be using underwater pile drivers and chipping hammers in waters frequented by the critically endangered Cook Inlet Beluga Whales. The National Marine Fisheries Service has determined that the whales would not experience long-term adverse affects form the noise generated by underwater activity.

Regulations require that work must stop if a whale is spotted within a certain distance. Unfortunately, new regulations have reduced the distance required for stopping work to just 200 meters, although when the project started, the distance was 1,300 meters.

According to Marine Issues Field Director for the HSUS, Sharon Young, the NMFS has underestimated the “impact of chronic noise on marine mammals over time.” She points out in the same article that even if behavioral changes have not been shown so far by the whales, it is inconclusive to assume they are not suffering from adverse effects, such as stress.

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Tourists at a Chinese aquarium were witness to a dramatic and highly unusual rescue bid, after a beluga whale rescued a drowning diver by pushing her out of the water.

The diver, called Yan Yung, had been taking part in a breath-holding competition in a 6-metre deep pool when she was struck with painful cramps in her legs at the aquarium at Harbin Polar Land in the country’s north-east Heilongjiang province.

“Maybe I was too nervous, and my legs had sudden cramps,” explained Yung. “I never dive into the water so deep and so cold. I was so nervous then. When I was choking with water and plummeting to the bottom, a sudden force pushed me out of the water.”

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The beluga whales of Alaska’s Cook Inlet are endangered and require additional protection to survive, officials from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Friday. The ruling contradicts Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s administration who has questioned the science showing a decline in the distinctive white species.

It was the second wildlife-themed rebuke Gov. Palin received from Washington this year. The governor had previously asked federal courts to overturn an Interior Department decision declaring polar bears threatened under the Endangered Species Act.

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