Scientists Team Up With “Unconventional Collaborators” of the Cetacean Kind to Study Greenland’s Warming Oceans

Eos reports that a team of scientists equipped six narwhals with satellite tags to record ocean temperature, salinity and depth in Scoresby Sound, the world’s largest fjord system off East Greenland. From August two thousand seventeen to July two thousand twenty the whales logged more than two thousand sixty dives, each at least fifty meters deep and spaced by at least fifteen minutes, providing data from depths beyond one thousand meters. Analysis showed that deep‑basin glaciers are bathed in significantly warmer Atlantic water, especially below one hundred fifty meters, a factor the researchers say is likely accelerating melt in the Nordvestfjord and neighboring fjords. The authors conclude that ethically using marine mammals as mobile sampling platforms could transform future oceanographic research on a warming Arctic.

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