Our guest on this episode of the Kenai Conversation is Sonia Kumar, a University of Alaska Fairbanks graduate student who studies the endangered Cook Inlet beluga whale population in the Kenai and Kasilof rivers.
Kumar says her previous work as a necropsy technician out of Anchorage led her to studying the auditory world of belugas. We talked about her past work, the challenges of monitoring sound in the Kenai and Kasilof rivers, and her latest research into environmental DNA.