Lone beluga whale spotted 1,500 miles from home, and nobody knows why
There's a big white whale swimming off the coast of Seattle, and no one knows why.
Over the past week, people in the greater Seattle area have spotted the white whale swimming around Puget Sound. The wayward cetacean — a beluga — is normally found in Arctic and subarctic waters.
"The closest beluga population is Cook Inlet, Alaska," which is about 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) away from Seattle, Howard Garrett, co-founder of Orca Network ... , told Live Science. ...
One of the first reported sightings occurred on Sunday (Oct. 3), when Jason Rogers ... filmed the white whale swimming in Commencement Bay near Tacoma, about 30 miles (50 km) south of Seattle. ...
Other people spotted the beluga (Delphinapterus leucas) around Puget Sound ...
There aren't any clues hinting at the newfound beluga's origins. "We've seen no markings, no indication of where it comes from," Garrett said. ...
Like many other Arctic and subarctic animals, beluga adults are white, which helps them stay camouflaged in a world of snow and sea ice ... Belugas are also known for their unique "melons," the round bumps on their heads that the whales use for communication and echolocation. In fact, belugas are social animals that live in pods of as many as 100 individuals, Garrett said, which makes this lone whale's journey all the more mysterious. ...
The last documented sighting of a beluga whale in Puget Sound was in 1940, Garrett said. There was also a report of a beluga in Puget Sound in 2010, but only one person reported seeing it, and they weren't able to get any photographic evidence of it, he noted. ...