Where Do Beluga Whales Live? Arctic Range, Estuaries and Rivers

Beluga range around the Arctic

The beluga whale has a circumpolar range, meaning it is found right around the Arctic, but it is patchy rather than continuous. Most belugas live roughly between 50° and 80° north. Scientists divide the species into about 20 populations, or stocks, each returning to its own summer area.

The largest single population summers along the west coast of Hudson Bay. An aerial survey by Fisheries and Oceans Canada in 2015 estimated it at roughly 55,000 belugas. Large populations also live in the eastern Beaufort Sea and the eastern Chukchi Sea, while others, such as the belugas of Svalbard and Ungava Bay, are small.

Belugas share much of this range with their only close relative. Narwhals, however, are concentrated on the Atlantic side of the Arctic, as explained in where do narwhals live?, while belugas are found all the way around it.

Summer: estuaries and river mouths

When the sea ice breaks up, many belugas head for shallow coastal waters. Some estuaries host hundreds or even thousands at a time. The best known are the mouths of the Churchill, Seal and Nelson rivers on Hudson Bay, the Mackenzie River delta in the western Canadian Arctic, Cunningham Inlet in Nunavut and the river mouths of the White Sea in Russia.

Belugas seem to use these places for several reasons. River mouths are warmer than the open Arctic sea, which helps belugas shed and regrow their outer skin each summer. Fish such as salmon, capelin and eulachon gather there. Shallow water may also offer some protection from orcas, and many calves are born in or near these bays.

Calves often return to the same estuary as their mothers year after year, so summer sites are traditional and well known to local Indigenous communities and scientists alike.

Winter: following the sea ice

In autumn, as ice forms in the bays, belugas move offshore. Many spend the winter along the edge of the pack ice or in polynyas, patches of sea that stay open because of wind and currents. Belugas need open water to breathe, but they can also use their hard back ridge and head to push up through thin ice, and they find cracks and breathing holes by echolocation.

Some journeys are long. Belugas that summer in the eastern Beaufort Sea winter in the Bering Sea, and those from western Hudson Bay winter in Hudson Strait and nearby waters. Others travel much shorter distances. Belugas are occasionally trapped when open water freezes over around them, leaving them vulnerable to polar bears and suffocation.

The southern outposts: St. Lawrence and Cook Inlet

Two beluga populations live far south of the Arctic and stay in the same general area all year.

The St. Lawrence River population lives in the estuary of the St. Lawrence and the Saguenay Fjord in Quebec, around 48° north, the southernmost regular beluga range in the Atlantic. These belugas are thought to be a remnant of populations left behind as the ice sheets retreated after the last ice age. Hunted heavily until the 1970s and exposed to industrial pollution, they are now listed as Endangered in Canada.

The Cook Inlet population lives near Anchorage, Alaska. It declined from about 1,300 whales in 1979 to an estimated 279 in 2018 and is listed as Endangered under the US Endangered Species Act. NOAA Fisheries’ latest best estimate is about 331 whales. In the Pacific, another southern population lives in the Sea of Okhotsk, around Sakhalin Bay and the mouth of the Amur River in Russia.

Do belugas live in rivers?

Belugas are marine whales, but they are the whale species most likely to be found in fresh water. Each summer they swim into river mouths, and some travel far upstream. Rivers they regularly enter include the Yukon and Kuskokwim in Alaska, the St. Lawrence in Canada and several large Russian rivers, such as the Northern Dvina, Ob, Yenisei and Amur.

Belugas sometimes follow migrating fish a long way inland. In 2006, a young beluga was found dead in the Tanana River near Fairbanks, Alaska, roughly 1,700 km (1,100 mi) from the sea. Such journeys are exceptional, and belugas cannot live permanently in fresh water.

Stray belugas in Europe

The nearest regular belugas to mainland Europe live around Svalbard and in the Russian Arctic, but lone animals sometimes wander far to the south.

• Rhine, Germany (1966): a beluga nicknamed Moby Dick swam up the Rhine from the Netherlands as far as Bonn, then returned to the North Sea about a month later.
• Thames, England (2018–2019): a beluga nicknamed Benny was seen in the Thames Estuary near Gravesend from September 2018 and stayed for several months.
• Seine, France (2022): a beluga swam up the Seine toward Paris in August 2022. It was badly underweight, and despite a large rescue effort it could not be saved.

Belugas have also been seen off Norway, Scotland and Ireland. Most strays are thought to be young animals that became separated from their group.

Where to see beluga whales

Churchill in Manitoba is the most famous place to watch belugas, with thousands in the river mouth in July and August. Tadoussac, where the Saguenay meets the St. Lawrence, offers sightings from May to October, and belugas are sometimes visible from the shore of Turnagain Arm near Anchorage. Both Canada and the United States set minimum approach distances for boats, especially around endangered populations. For other wildlife in these regions, see animals of Alaska, wild animals of Canada and our list of Arctic animals.