The white whale spotted swimming in the Delaware River between New Jersey and Pennsylvania this week may be a beluga that usually calls Canada home.
The lost whale is likely the animal dubbed Helis by researchers in Canada because of a propeller-shaped scar on its back, Robert Michaud, scientific director of the Group for Research and Education on Marine Mammals in Quebec, said. Helis, identified from photographs, is hundreds of miles away from its home in the St. Lawrence River, where it was first seen in 1986.
The 10-foot to 12-foot animal was spotted near Trenton two days ago, bringing hundreds of spectators to the river's banks to watch it swim. Scientists have theorized that the whale made a wrong turn on its way back to its Arctic home.
"It's kind of part of the normal behavior for wildlife," Michaud said. "Once in a while, there's a freak, an animal that gets lost and away from its normal range."
U.S. and New Jersey wildlife officials and staff of the Marine Mammal Tracking Center in Brigantine, N.J., have been tracking the whale's movements in the river. It had traveled south Wednesday, though it had been spotted back up near Trenton again in the evening.
About 1,000 beluga whales live in the St. Lawrence River, and they move into the Gulf of St. Lawrence in winter to avoid ice, Michaud said. Helis had been seen by Canadian authorities regularly until 1994.
"I don't think this animal is in a good situation," Michaud said. "It's away from home, and it's putting its life at risk every day."
Officials from the Marine Mammal Tracking Center and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Marine Fisheries Service are monitoring the whale's movements and trying to decide what to do if the animal's condition worsens or its presence risks harm to itself or people.
The animals feed on fish, krill, shrimp and other crustaceans and can live to be 50 years old, grow to as long as 16.5 feet and weigh up to 1.5 tons, according to the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society in England.
Beluga whales, also known as "sea canaries" for the sounds they make, are born dark gray and eventually become white as they age. There are about 50,000 of the animals in the world, living in Arctic and subarctic regions in Russia, Greenland and North America.
Appearances by solitary belugas in the mid-Atlantic region are rare, although one of the animals was spotted in southern New Jersey in August 1978, and a whale nicknamed "Poco" made its way along the New England coast last year, NOAA said.
There were as many as 50,000 belugas in the St. Lawrence River before 1885.