There is no denying that it has been a brutally hot summer in North America and Europe. So if you need a new way to cool off while another heat dome is being installed, let us suggest the annual Beluga Cam. The camera will officially activate on Wednesday, July 15 (Arctic Sea Ice Day) and will show sea canaries on their summer vacation in Canada. Until then, beluga enthusiasts can enjoy the highlights of 2025.

Beluga 2025 ship underwater camera | Highlights

Approximately 57,000 beluga whales (Delphinapterus leucas) migrate to southern Canadian waters during the ice-free summer months. These white whales travel to the Churchill River, which then empties into Hudson Bay. While there, they feed, molt, and give birth to their young in the safety of the shallow waters.

Polar Bears International (PBI) and explore.org will share two different points of view on board The Canarian seaalso known as the Beluga Boat. Experience a bit of the world of the beluga and immerse yourself in the sights and sounds of their experience through these live cameras.

“You’ll see all these family groups swimming around each other. Moms take care of the babies and in these maternal lineages,” said biologist and PBI conservation director Alysa McCall. popular science in 2024. “They like to follow the wake of the boat. We go very slowly and the belugas just accompany us and they like to go in front of a camera. They bring their babies close to the camera and talk all day.”

Viewers will see views of the whales above and below the water and hear their frequent vocalizations through the hydrophone. The chamber also powers the Beluga Bits Citizen Science Project. More than 40,000 volunteers have recorded more than 10 million photographic classifications of belugas who are helping scientists study a species that can be difficult to observe in the wild. Previous volunteers even spotted two species of jellyfish that had never before been recorded in Hudson Bay.

Live broadcasts from the Beluga Boat will take place on July 15 at 10:00 am EDT and 1:30 pm EDT.

Svalbard’s first polar bear tracker will also be launched on Arctic Sea Ice Day. Created in collaboration with the Norwegian Polar Institute, this new project follows two polar bears from the Barents Sea (Ursus maritimus) around Svalbard, an archipelago between mainland Norway and the North Pole.

The new tracker builds on the success of the Hudson Bay Polar Bear Tracker, which has been operating for more than 10 years with the University of Alberta and Environment and Climate Change Canada. The Hudson Bay Polar Bear Tracker has just been updated, so viewers can see an animation of the bears’ trails year-round. Lucky viewers will even get to see Hope, the mother polar bear who adopted a cub in the fall of 2025.

“On Arctic Sea Ice Day, we are excited to connect with people around the world as we celebrate this special ecosystem and inspire conservation action to protect not only polar bears, but the entire interconnected Arctic ecosystem,” Krista Wright, executive director of PBI, said in a statement. “What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stop there. Every fraction of a degree of warming matters—for polar bears, for Arctic wildlife, and for our shared global climate.”

2025 PopSci Best of what’s new

The 50 most important innovations of the year