Beluga snapshots

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Beluga whale season is underway and that means the real heart of the Beluga Bits project is underway! Over at explore.org the captain takes the beluga boat out on the Hudson Bay, weather permitting, to collect video footage of the whales and live streams the video for people to view. Beluga Bits provides the boat calendar so you can logon to watch the videos and capture pictures of the belugas (current calendar below).

There are two cameras, one above the deck and a second underwater to watch for belugas. As a citizen scientist, I watch a camera and take ‘snapshots’ when I see a beluga to be further investigated. It has been fun and interesting to see the interest the whales have in the boat as it trolls the bay and learning from those on board. For instance, it was mentioned that the water in the underwater camera was very difficult to see the whales and the captain of the boat responded that the area had received a lot of rain recently and had stirred up the water. Good to know. I switched over the above the deck camera and could much more easily spot the whales for my snapshots.

Above is an image from a snapshot I took today during the boat trip compared to an image taken by another scientist last season, when the water was more clear (below). 

I enjoy the freedom to logon whenever to either catch the live video or to sort through older snapshots and provide more detailed information about the whales in the images. While I didn’t have to participate in any training before hand, Beluga Bits provides picture examples of how to sex individuals and determining if any of the individuals seen have distinguishing marks or scars. Answering these questions provides the researchers information about the social structure of whales visiting the area (males and females), while marks and scars provide an opportunity to identify individuals. I would have liked to see maybe a video with more examples or even a quiz of some kind to ensure those participating felt really sure about the information they were committing to. However, Beluga Bits also has a well used section called ‘TALK’ where participants can ask others questions about the snapshots they are working on or even general beluga questions. I appreciate this type of double check system because of the lack of training.

I’m looking forward to more boat trips to continue my watch for belugas!


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