Survey biases associated with poor visibility and detectability

were minimized, enabling our analyses to be based on the most consistent data set available and possible, including seven survey seasons, >35 000 km of transect coverage and >20 000 sightings of surfaced beluga. The effect of reduced detectability of belugas at increasing distances from the aircraft negatively biases the counts downward (Davis and Evans, 1982 and Norton and Harwood, 1985), but this would be consistent among the surveys reported here given standardized method and minimum survey condition criteria applied in all cases. The relative abundance of belugas was highly variable among the three subareas of the TNMPA, with Niaqunnaq being used by 3–4 times more belugas, including by females with calves. The Ripley’s L analyses Luminespib datasheet revealed clustering of beluga within the TNMPA in all July time periods, in both the 1970s–1980s and especially in late July 1992, and similarly among the three subareas. Our observation of distribution being less clumped in West Mackenzie Bay aligns well with previous suggestions that belugas use this area as a travel corridor between the other DAPT cell line three subareas and the offshore ( Fraker et al., 1979 and Norton and Harwood,

1986). The clumped pattern of distribution in the three zones of the TNMPA is in marked contrast to patterns that are observed in the offshore Beaufort Sea (Harwood and Kingsley, 2013), where sightings are widespread

and consist almost exclusively of small, widely distributed singles or groups of 2 or 3 whales (Norton and Harwood, 1985). This underscores how Beaufort Sea belugas use habitats in the TNMPA differently than the offshore, and likely for different reasons (Norton and Harwood, 1985 and Norton and Harwood, 1986). The PVC distribution analysis revealed seven specific geographic areas within the TNMPA subareas (‘hot spots’) where belugas were regularly and recurrently concentrated during 1977–1985. There was overlap in the specific ‘hot spot’ locations among years (Fig. 6), consistent with local knowledge held by beluga harvesters, who have for centuries known of the beluga’s tendency to concentrate in certain areas (Nuligak, 1966, McGhee, 1988 and Day, Urease 2002). This tendency for recurrence in the same geographic locations within an estuary has also been reported for the Cook Inlet beluga (Carter and Nielsen, 2011), and St. Lawrence beluga (Mosnier et al., 2010), where local knowledge and experience have been used to identify important habitats and examine linkages to potential environmental change. Predicted and contemporary oceanographic and sea ice changes, both with potential to influence beluga moulting and other activities in the Estuary, and the availability of their prey (Tynan and DeMaster, 1997, Serreze et al., 2007, Comiso et al., 2008, Bluhm and Gradinger, 2008, Walsh, 2008 and Laidre et al.