Leeds, England, (Reuter) - Beluga whales, long thought to be huge stay-at-homes who hardly left the Arctic coast, are secret travellers with astonishing powers of navigation and dive to great depths, scientists said on Monday.
The discovery follows the development of new tracking techniques using the latest in radio technology. Scientists from the Sea Mammal Research Unit of the University of St Andrews in Scotland tracked North American populations of the beluga, or white WHALE.
The unit's Tony Martin told Britain's main annual science festival that the research had overturned accepted wisdom about the mammals, which can grow up to five metres long and weigh up to two tonnes.
"The Eskimos who hunt belugas saw our findings and said they were rubbish... at first," Martin said.
Instead of hugging the shoreline of the High Arctic, male belugas raced thousands of kilometres to a deep marine trench to gorge themselves on polar cod, he said. To do so, they swim under apparently unbroken ice, using previously unsuspected skills to navigate their way over thousands of kilometres and to find isolated breathing holes in the ice cover. The secrets of how the whales navigate have yet to be deciphered but the scientists believe they might find airholes by listening for faint sounds of water swirling around them.
Once at the marine trench, the whales then dived up to 550 metres to catch fish, said Martin, who said the new discovery showed the belugas were in fact "able to exploit the entire Arctic". Female belugas do not accompany the males but travel with their young -- both male and female -- to a shallower trench closer to home.
Martin told The British Association festival that the new findings could help in devising conservation strategies -- and could also force scientists to revise their estimates of the beluga WHALE population.
Official estimates of the numbers of the 18 kinds of beluga WHALE around the Arctic range from 40,000 to 80,000. Martin said this might now have to be revised to 200,000.
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