The rapid disappearance of the Cook Inlet beluga whale population has led Alaska Native whalers to agree once again to cancel their annual hunt at the request of the National Marine Fisheries Service. The fisheries service is expected to decide this week whether to declare the belugas an endangered species.

Scientists once believed that the previously unlimited Native subsistence harvests were to blame for the decline, with an average of 77 whales killed each year between 1995 and 1998. However belugas continued to die out even after the fisheries service instituted strict hunting limits in 1999. Under the 2007 quota, hunters would have been allowed two attempts to shoot adult male whales starting in July after most calves have been born. During the summer, hunters usually search for pods at the mouths of rivers, where whales feed on spawning red and silver salmon.

Village council president Peter Merryman said he has witnessed the decrease in beluga whale pods for years and has no problems with holding off for another season. Merryman started hunting the whales as a teenager in the 1950s when roughly 2,000 or more belugas lived in the Cook Inlet. The latest estimate puts the population at 300. The population was declared depleted in 2000 under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

The Cook Inlet is a fairly busy and noisy area for the animals with oil and gas drilling, commercial fishing operations and ships carrying most of the state's imports to Anchorage. The belugas are one of five genetically and geographically distinct populations living along the perimeter of Alaska. Scientists now hope to collect more information about the whales' reproductive habits, ages and diet, as well as local contaminant and underwater noise levels.

Others beluga whales are found in the more remote waters of Bristol Bay, the eastern Bering Sea, the eastern Chukchi Sea and the Beaufort Sea, which is north of Alaska and Canada. The other groups are much healthier, with a total population estimate between 35,000 and 40,000 animals.