Narwhals Help Researchers Uncover Unique Data From the Deepest East Greenland Fjords
8 Articles
8 Articles
In hard-to-reach Arctic waters, this cetacean also known as the "Sea Unicorn" helps researchers to collect essential data on temperature and salinity. Six narwhals, equipped with sensors after a brief capture, contributed to a climate study published on Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. While covering their occupations, these "atypical collaborators" carried out between 2017 and 2020 more than 2,000 surveys in remote waters of eastern G…
Narwhals are helping scientists map warm water hidden in Greenland’s fjords
You might be familiar with the narwhal – otherwise known as the “unicorn of the sea”. The whale species, with their iconic spiral tusks that can extend up to three metres long, live year-round in Arctic waters across Canada, Greenland and Russia. They attract committed tourists determined to see and photograph them in the wild, where, if lucky, they can be observed gathering and feeding in large groups. Between 2017 and 2019, a group of scientis…
The study points out that the melting of glacials is accelerating in its depths.
Narwhals help researchers uncover unique data from the deepest East Greenland fjords
They live in some of the most inaccessible waters on Earth, where ocean temperatures hover around freezing. Because they move through areas that humans rarely reach, they have been able to help researchers with a special task.
Little is known about the world's largest fjord system. Whales equipped with measuring instruments have now provided science with valuable data from more than 1500 metres of depth – and bad news for the glaciers.
Narwhals document atlantification of East Greenland
Abstract To resolve temperature and salinity changes in remote East Greenland coastal waters, including deep glacier-front basins, we equipped narwhals ( Monodon monoceros ) with conductivity-temperature-depth archival instruments. These data, combined with the World Ocean Database, reveal long-term warming of Atlantic Intermediate Water (AIW) penetrating East Greenland’s coastal system. In the Blosseville Basin, AIW dominates below ∼250 meters …
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