A new viral video depicting a juvenile beluga whale playing peek-a-boo with a child is drawing attention to Mystic Aquarium's arctic animals.
The video, which has nearly a million views, shows a group of children laughing while a 12-year-old beluga whale checks them out from its tank.
"You're actually seeing Juno, who's a young, sub-adult male, who's very curious and very playful, engaging in play behavior. Interacting with some of our guests, the children," said Tracy Romano, executive vice president of research and zoological operations at Mystic Aquarium.
Romano said that every summer, the aquarium's research team goes to four different spots in the Arctic to study belugas in the wild. "We're trying to understand how climate change is impacting beluga health and behavior," she said.
Part of that observation involves watching the whales play with each other and with the environment. "They're very interested in picking up things from the ocean floor," Romano said. "It may be a piece of kelp. It may be a rock, but they often engage with their environment, their surroundings."
The belugas' surroundings, Romano said, are being transformed by climate change. She said no one's sure how belugas interact with Arctic ice, but that if it melts, the whales could be more vulnerable to human and animal predation.
"You may see more pathogens that weren't in the area becoming more apparent in the areas where belugas are, and, of course, shifts in prey," Romano said. "All of these things -- we're not really sure if the beluga will adapt, or how the beluga will handle some of these issues that come with the loss of sea ice."
Romano said beluga populations are strong, but there are some areas where they've become endangered, like Cook Inlet, Alaska.
As for Juno, it's not his first time finding an audience online. A video of him getting serenaded by a mariachi band has nearly four million views on YouTube.
