Scientists from Mystic Aquarium & Institute for Exploration sent teams to Warwick and Jamestown, R.I., Monday to confirm that three beluga whales are swimming in Narragansett Bay.

Reports of the rare sightings came to the aquarium from Jamestown on Saturday and Sunday, said Dale Wolbrink, the aquarium's director of public relations. Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration viewed a video and confirmed that the animals were belugas.

Belugas, described by Tracy Romano, one of the aquarium's beluga experts, as "beautiful, all-white animals," have a dorsal ridge instead of a dorsal fin.

They usually don't go much farther south than the Arctic Circle, said Paul Anderson, another beluga researcher at the aquarium.

Romano and Anderson caught glimpses of the three at about 11:45 a.m. from Rocky Point in Warwick.

"The whales look fine," Romano said. They didn't appear to be in any distress. "They seem to be milling about, staying in a certain area. We could see them surface occasionally. They appear to be doing fine."

Anderson was also part of a second team that went out for a closer look in a boat. At Fort Wetherill in Jamestown, they met with Scott Olszewski, a marine biologist from the state Department of Environmental Management's Marine Fisheries Center.

The team in the boat, which included Laura Thompson and Cheryl Miller, saw one whale at about 1:45 p.m., Anderson said. Wave crests were breaking, he said, which made it a challenge to see the white animals.

Romano said they couldn't estimate the whales' lengths, but she said they were apparently all adults because young belugas start out dark gray and gradually get lighter.

The whales seem to have found food in the Bay. They eat many kinds of fish, as well as squid, worms and shellfish, she said.

Romano and Anderson study the aquarium's three belugas, the males Juno and Naluark, and Kela. They also study belugas in the wild, from Bristol Bay and Point Lay in Alaska and from Somerset Island in Canada.

Romano said research on the captive whales is helping them develop tools for studying wild whales, such as "collecting breaths" from the belugas' blowholes to identify hormones.

Although sightings this far south are rare, last year, one beluga was seen in Narragansett Bay and apparently a second was seen in the Taunton River.

She cautioned people against trying to get close to the whales, which are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

"We want boats to stay away," she said.