Understanding the narwhal: A species at the crossroads

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      Last summer, Vancouver-based writer and photographer Isabelle Groc travelled to Baffin Island, Nunavut, to track narwhals. These are one of the most elusive species in the world. She joined a two-week narwhal research expedition, and reports on her Arctic journey and close encounters with the "sea unicorn".

      This article is the third in a 10-part series. Read part two here.

      Not long after we finished setting up our research camp in Tremblay Sound, I completed my first night shift from 3 to 6 a.m., and went to bed with a bad headache.

      Because everybody was on a strict shift rotation schedule on a 24-hour basis, we caught up on lost sleep at different times of the day, and team members were rarely all awake at the same time, except when we caught narwhals in the net.

      After only a few hours of sleep following this first night shift, I was thankful that I got up just in time to grab a coffee in the kitchen tent and witness the most beautiful event: several hundreds of narwhals traveling in tightly knit groups just in front of us.

      There were so many of them that it felt like the water had suddenly become a loud breathing factory, with the whales marching together, males leading the groups, followed by clusters of females with calves.

      Watching these confident behaviours was both reassuring and poignant. A few years ago, a paper published in the journal Ecological Applications quantified the sensitivity of several Arctic marine mammals species to climate change. The researchers found that narwhals, along with polar bears and hooded seals, appeared to be the species most vulnerable to climate change, primarily because of their reliance on sea ice and specialized feeding.

      As a matter of fact, that summer, the largest loss of Arctic ice was recorded since satellite records began in the 1970s. With less sea ice and more open water for longer periods, it means increased shipping activity and more noise.

      Narwhals are very vocal, and during our time at Tremblay Sound, team member Clint Wright, Vancouver Aquarium’s senior vice-president and general manager, put hydrophones in the water to record narwhal sounds. I had the opportunity to listen—and I was amazed by the animals’ vocal repertoire. There were so many whistles, clicks, and grunts. It was loud too!

      Marianne Marcoux, who did her PhD on narwhal communication and grouping behaviour, suggested that, like bottlenose dolphins, narwhals might produce signature whistles.

      Realizing how vocal narwhals were, I wondered how they would respond to increased noise in the silent Arctic waters.

      “Narwhal is one of these species that really need quiet conditions to transmit sound over big distances,” noted expedition team member Peter Ewins, Arctic species conservation specialist at World Wildlife Fund Canada.

      While the Baffin Bay narwhal population is currently considered to be stable, several threats could alter the future of the species. Changing environmental conditions in the Arctic open unprecedented opportunities for industrial development that has the potential to compromise wildlife habitat.

      In Nunavut, the proposed Mary River iron ore project could have impacts on narwhal, but also on other Arctic species including caribou, bowhead whales, and walruses.

      “There is a major likelihood of disruption to these habitats that may become totally unsuitable to these animals,” said Ewins. “Narwhal is well adapted to the natural Arctic environment, but the unnatural and anthropogenic activities represent significant risk.”

      This is the narwhal paradox: a resilient, hardy species capable of surviving in the harsh Arctic environment, but also a fragile animal faced with extraordinary challenges: climate change, hunting pressures, oil spill risks, industrial development.

      The question is how much can the narwhal take? Scientists are already investigating the connection between narwhal sea ice entrapments and changing ice conditions on the animals’ summering areas.

      Further, climate change and the resulting loss of sea ice during the summer have opened new hunting territory for killer whales in the eastern Canadian Arctic. It means that narwhals are now potentially more vulnerable to attacks from killer whales moving in waters previously inaccessible to them.

      Learning about these different threats and their cumulative impacts, I deeply understood the critical importance of the work being conducted here and the team’s commitment to learn more about this species.

      We were ready to set the net in the water and catch our first whale. 


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