Report information
The Narwhal, with its grey and white mottled skin and that incredible tusk on its forehead, is surely one of the world’s most enigmatic creatures. It’s a true creature of the ice, staying in Arctic waters all year round and diving to mind-boggling depths – over 4500 feet has been recorded. But living where they do in remote and often inaccessible places means that Narwhals still hold plenty of secrets for scientists to uncover. Where do they go to in winter, for example?
In our last report, Dan Rees reported from Inglefield Fjord in North West Greenland, where thousands of the Narwhals congregate each summer. In the autumn, the Narwhals head out to sea but where they go is something of a mystery. Our reporter Dan Rees joined Dr Kristin Laidre from the Polar Science Centre who was employing the services of the local Inuit to help tag Narwhals. Using their unique stealth and skill to attach satellite tags to the Narwhal, Dr Kristin and her team hoped they would be able to follow this population of Narwhals on their autumn migration. However, we recently received some bad news from Dr Kristin...
I am sorry to report that most of our tags have stopped and the whales were still in the fjord when the tags stopped, which means we did not "break the mystery" of where they go in the fall and winter. This is not that unexpected given the results for the past two years and how hard it is to get the tags to stay on when you can't catch the animals, but we keep trying.
Despite some changes to the design and shape
of the transmitters, we still had problems with attachment to the Narwhals and only received good data for a few weeks. This project is a
challenge given we cannot catch the whales in nets, and we are
constantly learning and improving upon our experience from the previous
year to try and improve tag longevity. Unfortunately it's not easy to
track these whales!
Our plans for the fall are to target an aggregation of Narwhals in late
November that *may* be the same whales we tagged in Inglefield
Bredning. We will work with Inuit hunters to catch them in nets in the early
winter (dark and cold!) and if we can catch them, hand-attach satellite
tags to their dorsal ridge. These tags provide reliable data for up to
a year so we will learn a lot about where the winter aggregation comes
from and if it is related to Inglefield Bredning.
Further Reading:
Last Narwhal report: Dan Rees meets the Narwhals
NOAA's Tracking Narwhals in Greenland
Narwhal video at our Narwhal homepage