Earlier this month, members from our Conservation and Research department made their way back up to Churchill where they worked with our partners, Polar Bears International and Explore.org, to capture photographs and video footage of beluga whales!
One of the ways Assiniboine Park Zoo helps work towards conserving and protecting northern species and environments is through our Beluga Bits project. Beluga Bits is a collaborative, community science-based project studying beluga whales that spend their summers in the Churchill River estuary in northern Manitoba. Monitoring these whales will allow us to track beluga whale and ocean health and help identify emerging threats to this population as they arise.
Interested in helping us out with our research? Log-in to Zooniverse and join the almost 30,000 volunteers in helping us to decode the underwater lives of beluga whales.
The Beluga Boat (M/V Delphi), will be active in the Churchill estuary from now until early September. You can tune in to the livestream weekdays for every 4-hour tour (weather permitting). Watch the livestream here, hosted on Explore.org.
Learn more about the Beluga Bits project on our website.
APC staff Dr. Courtney Shuert, Conservation Programs Manager, and Kasey Ryan, Conservation Technician, spent nearly three weeks in Churchill to collect video footage and document beluga behaviour as part of one of the Conservation and Research department’s conservation strategy to Understand the Changing Arctic. (Photo: C. Shuert)
A group of beluga whales moving in the Churchill River estuary taken from the Beluga Boat. APC Conservation and Research staff use above water photos to try to identify unique individuals from above that we may catch on the underwater video footage as part of our research. (Photo: C. Shuert)
