They live in some of the most inaccessible waters on Earth, where ocean temperatures hover around freezing.
They live in some of the most inaccessible waters on Earth, where ocean temperatures hover around freezing. And because they move through areas that humans rarely reach, they have been able to help researchers with a very special task.
Equipped with sensors, six narwhals from the Scoresby Sound region, the world’s largest fjord system on Greenland’s east coast, collected data during their natural movements. This provided researchers from the University of Copenhagen, the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources and other institutions with entirely new data that would otherwise have been impossible to obtain.
“The narwhals have been in parts of the fjords where very few measurements have been taken before. And there, 300 kilometres from the coast, we find traces of Atlantic water. It is completely new that we can show this,” says Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen, Professor at the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources.
The water in the fjord system is a mixture of cold Polar Water originating in the Arctic and warmer, more saline Atlantic Intermediate Water from the Atlantic Ocean.
Read More: University of Copenhagen
Image: Six narwhals like these were equipped with CTD sensors that measured ocean temperature, salinity and depth. (Photo: Carsten Egevang)
