It's no secret that the proverbial canary in the climate change mine is the Arctic. As National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) administrator Jane Lubchenco noted when her organization launched its annual Arctic Report Card last week,“To quote one of my NOAA colleagues, ‘whatever is going to happen in the rest of the world happens first, and to the greatest extent, in the Arctic.’”
But, even as the Arctic warms, seemingly irrevocably, it is still a formidable environment in which to operate, particularly in the winter. The coasts of Greenland, in particular, act as pathways for ice from the Arctic Ocean, as a result of which winter research expeditions can require icebreaking vessels that cost millions of dollars to charter.
Consequently, in some areas, such as Baffin Bay, a large area between northeast Canada and southwest Greenland, winter data have been scarce -- or, in the words of Mike Steele of the University of Washington, "there was this gigantic, embarrassing hole."
That hole is now being filled - thanks to narwhals, medium-size whales, endemic to the Arctic, known as unicorns of the seas because of the single, spiralling tusk found in males.
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