Do beluga whales use echolocation?

Yes. Beluga whales use echolocation to find fish and to steer through sea ice. They send out fast clicks, mostly above 60 kHz, and listen for the echoes, says a 2021 study of wild belugas. That is far too high for people to hear. A narrow beam of sound helps them find gaps in the ice to breathe.

How do beluga whales use echolocation?

Echolocation means “finding things by echo”. A beluga makes a click, the sound hits an object, and an echo comes back. The time the echo takes tells the whale how far away the object is. The strength and shape of the echo hint at its size and what it is made of.

Here is how a beluga does it, step by step:

1. Make the click. Belugas have no vocal cords. They push air past two sets of “phonic lips” inside the nose, below the blowhole. A 2009 study by Lammers and Castellote found that both sides fire at once, and the two pulses merge into one click.
2. Aim the beam. The click passes through the melon, the fatty bulge on the forehead. NOAA Fisheries says the melon focuses and shapes the sound, like a lens.
3. Listen for the echo. Toothed whales are thought to pick up echoes mainly through fat-filled parts of the lower jaw, which carry sound to the ears.
4. Click faster when close. As a beluga closes in on a fish, the clicks speed up into a “buzz”, with gaps of less than 9 thousandths of a second, reports a 2021 study of wild belugas in Alaska.

Sound travels more than four times faster in water than in air. That makes it a good way to “see” in dark or muddy water, where eyes do not help much.

How high and how loud are beluga clicks?

Very high and very loud. The numbers below come from studies that recorded belugas with underwater microphones called hydrophones.

Beluga echolocation and hearing in numbers

Measure	Value	Where measured	Source
Main click pitch (peak frequency)	About 69 kHz on average	Wild belugas, Arctic	Zahn et al. 2021, Scientific Reports
Main click pitch (peak frequency)	About 97 kHz, with a second peak near 150 kHz	Wild belugas, West Greenland	Zahn et al. 2021, PLOS ONE
Loudness at source	About 212 dB re 1 µPa (peak to peak)	Wild belugas, West Greenland	Zahn et al. 2021, PLOS ONE
Width of the sound beam	About 5.4° (up and down)	Wild belugas, West Greenland	Zahn et al. 2021, PLOS ONE
Time between clicks	About 100 milliseconds (searching)	Wild belugas, West Greenland	Zahn et al. 2021, PLOS ONE
Time between clicks in a feeding buzz	Under 9 milliseconds	Wild belugas, Alaska	Castellote et al. 2021
Highest pitch heard	At least 128 kHz; two whales up to 150 kHz	7 wild belugas, Bristol Bay, Alaska	Castellote et al. 2014
Human hearing, for comparison	0.02–20 kHz	—	NOAA Fisheries

A kilohertz (kHz) is a thousand vibrations per second. Most beluga clicks are three or more times higher than the highest note a young person can hear. Also, decibels in water are measured on a different scale from decibels in air, so 212 dB underwater is not the same as 212 dB at a rock concert.

Why do belugas need echolocation in the Arctic?

Belugas live among sea ice for much of the year. They must come up to breathe, so finding open water is life or death. A 2021 study in West Greenland found the beluga’s sound beam is very narrow. The authors say this helps cut out echoes from the ice surface, so belugas can move through cracks in the pack ice and find breathing holes.

The same study saw belugas moving their beam up and down, by up to 9°, as if scanning a room with a torch. They seemed to probe the space around them, not just what was straight ahead.

Belugas also feed in murky places. In Alaska, belugas hunted in water just 0 to 2 m deep over mudflats, reports Castellote and colleagues. Unlike many whales, they clicked hard both at the surface and during dives. In muddy water, sound works where eyes cannot.

What does the beluga’s melon do?

The melon is the round, soft forehead that makes belugas look so friendly. It is made of special fat, and it acts like a sound lens. NOAA Fisheries calls it a round, flexible melon that focuses and shapes their sounds.

The Lammers and Castellote study showed that the two pulses from the left and right phonic lips join inside the melon. They leave the front of the head as one click. Straight ahead, the click measured 182 dB. To the side, it was 33 to 41 dB quieter. So the melon sends most of the sound forward.

A beluga’s melon can change shape, which is unusual among whales. To see how the melon, the missing back fin and the bendy neck fit together, read what beluga whales look like.

Why are beluga whales called sea canaries?

Because they are so noisy. NOAA Fisheries says belugas are called “canaries of the sea” for their huge range of whistles, squeals, moos, chirps and clicks. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game says they make a larger range of sounds than any other marine mammal.

It helps to split beluga sounds into two jobs. Clicks are mainly for echolocation, a way of seeing. Whistles and other calls are for talking to each other. Those social calls range from about 200 Hz to 20 kHz, reports Castellote and colleagues. That range overlaps with human hearing, which is why you can hear belugas chirp in videos, but not their highest clicks.

Does noise affect beluga echolocation?

Yes. Ships, boats, dredging and building work all add noise to the sea. A NOAA study in Cook Inlet, Alaska, listed 13 human noise sources. In more than 8,700 hours of recordings from 2008 to 2013, it found not a single 24-hour period without human noise, says NOAA Fisheries.

Noise can drown out echoes. NOAA reports that, in comparable studies, ship noise reduced beluga echolocation range by up to 85%. That matters because the Cook Inlet belugas are listed as Endangered in the United States.

Belugas are not the only animals with sonar. Dolphins use the same trick, as our page on how dolphins are adapted to the sea explains. Curious how big a beluga is? See how much a beluga whale weighs.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. Scientific Reports via PubMed Central (2021). Acoustic differentiation and classification of wild belugas and narwhals using echolocation clicks (Zahn et al., Scientific Reports, doi:10.1038/s41598-021-01441-w).
2. PLOS ONE via PubMed Central (2021). Vertical sonar beam width and scanning behavior of wild belugas in West Greenland (Zahn et al., PLOS ONE, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0257054).
3. Biology Letters via PubMed Central (2009). The beluga whale produces two pulses to form its sonar signal (Lammers & Castellote, Biology Letters, doi:10.1098/rsbl.2008.0782).
4. PLOS ONE via PubMed Central (2021). Beluga whale acoustic foraging behavior and applications for long term monitoring (Castellote et al., PLOS ONE, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0260485).
5. Journal of Experimental Biology (2014). Baseline hearing abilities and variability in wild beluga whales (Castellote et al., Journal of Experimental Biology, doi:10.1242/jeb.093252).
6. NOAA Fisheries. Potential impacts of noise on endangered beluga whales in Cook Inlet.
7. NOAA Fisheries. Beluga whale species profile.
8. Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Beluga whale species profile.

Sources checked 15 September 2026.