Adult belugas can also be much larger than a casual viewer might assume from photographs.
NOAA says the animals can reach lengths of up to about 16 feet, while an average weight cited by the agency is around 3,150 pounds.
So when a beluga's head appears through an opening in the ice, there is a very large marine mammal beneath the surface.
The Importance of Finding Air
There is another crucial reason belugas interact with openings in ice.
Belugas are mammals.
They cannot breathe underwater.
Like other whales, they must reach the surface to breathe air.
In open water, that process is straightforward. A whale swims upward, surfaces, breathes and dives again.
Ice complicates the situation.
When extensive ice covers the sea, whales need access to open water in order to breathe.
Belugas are adapted to navigating these environments and can use cracks, leads and openings in the ice.
This means the sight of a beluga approaching an opening in an icy environment is not, by itself, biologically strange.
What is unusual in the viral story is the extraordinary overlap between the whale's world and the fisherman's.
The fisherman had an opening connecting him to the water below.
The whale needed access to the world above.
For a few seconds, their paths reportedly converged at exactly the same point.
The “Canaries of the Sea”
Belugas are not only visually distinctive.
They are extraordinarily vocal.
Their wide variety of sounds has earned them the nickname “canaries of the sea.”
NOAA Fisheries says belugas produce whistles, chirps, clicks, squeals and other vocalizations.
Sound is critically important in their environment.
Visibility underwater can be poor, particularly beneath ice or in silty coastal waters. Belugas use echolocation to help navigate and locate prey.
Echolocation works by producing sounds and interpreting the returning echoes. Those echoes can provide information about objects and animals in the surrounding water.
For a beluga moving beneath ice, sound can therefore provide information that eyesight alone may not.
Their rounded melon is part of this remarkable sensory system, helping focus and modulate vocalizations.
A person sitting quietly above an ice hole might see only darkness beneath the surface.
A beluga below is experiencing that environment through an entirely different sensory world.
Social Animals in a Harsh Environment
Belugas are also highly social animals.
NOAA reports that groups can range from just a few individuals to gatherings of hundreds of whales.
They migrate, feed and interact socially, although group composition can change as individual whales move between groups.
Their social nature has helped create a popular image of belugas as friendly and curious.
There are documented examples of individual belugas approaching boats or interacting closely with people.
One famous example was the beluga known as Hvaldimir, who appeared off northern Norway in 2019 wearing a harness and seemed unusually comfortable around humans. National Geographic later described observations of the whale and noted its remarkable friendliness, while also emphasizing that its behavior was unusual for a wild beluga.
That distinction is important.
Belugas can exhibit curiosity, but every encounter has its own circumstances. A whale approaching an opening should not automatically be assumed to be seeking human companionship.
In the case of an opening in sea ice, access to air alone provides an obvious reason for a whale to approach the surface.
The scientifically cautious interpretation is therefore much simpler than the viral one:
A beluga reportedly surfaced through an opening being used by an ice fisherman.
The idea that it “came to say hello” makes for a charming caption, but we cannot know what the whale intended.