Whalin' Palin

The 180 watery miles from the Gulf of Alaska to Anchorage known as Cook Inlet are a tough place for a beluga whale to make a living.

In the summer, when glacially fed streams and rivers wash fine sediment into the water, the turbidity makes the water opaque. The relatively small white whales, made famous to children everywhere in the Raffi song "Baby Beluga," use echolocation to find food and navigate their cloudy surroundings. The belugas send out noises until they bounce off something, like sonar in a submarine. They are the most vocal of all whales, and their frequent high-pitched twitters have earned them the affectionate nickname the "sea canary."

Looking for food, the belugas in Cook Inlet venture into perilously shallow areas. "They move in extremely dangerous areas and in some of the biggest tides in the world," says Craig Matkin, a marine mammal biologist for the North Gulf Oceanic Society. "Sometimes they strand and have to get off the sand." The whales can withstand being beached for as long as 12 hours, waiting for the next tide to come in.

But for all the amazing ways that the Cook Inlet belugas cope with their stark environment, there's one imminent threat for which they have no adaptation: Gov. Sarah Palin.

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