Another ice entrapment

           The ice entrapment of 11 killer whales last week generated international media attention and raised concerns about the increasing frequency of such events and how best to address them.  It appears that a shift in wind and ice enabled the whales to escape this time, changing what could have been a horrifying story into a somewhat heartwarming one. But that is likely the exception to the rule.

Photo by ABC News

            As I wrote last winter when dozens of beluga whales became entrapped by closing ice in the Bering Sea near Russia, ice entrapments of large numbers of whales has been infrequent through the years, though the Arctic is so thinly populated that no one is around to observe or document entrapments in the vast majority of the region.  When 600 narwhals were entrapped off Baffin Island in Nunavut in 2008, local Inuit hunters said the last entrapment they recalled occurred way back in 1943.  But there are fears that climate change is increasing its frequency.

            Narwhal biologist Kristin Laidre at the University of Washington told me that four ice entrapments that resulted in the deaths of more than 700 narwhals occurred in 2008 and 2009 – the first one ever documented in East Greenland, as well as two in northwest Greenland and the very large one near Pond inlet.

Laidre is beginning to examine the distribution and timing of known ice entrapments and look at the trends in the breakup of sea ice on the narwhal’s summering grounds. She has found what she calls “strongly significant trends” that suggest that the ice is forming later and later.  “Over a 30 year period there is a three to four week difference in when the ice forms,” she said.  “If ice formation is a clue to the narwhals that it’s time to get out of their summering grounds, then the trigger is changing, the pattern is changing.” 

Is that change in the formation of ice making narwhals more vulnerable to ice entrapments?  Laidre hypothesizes that it may be the case, though there is precious little data from which to draw conclusions just yet.  But the hints she has found so far are another indication of the dangerous implications of global warming.

Tusk smuggling ring busted

          Narwhals are in the news again, but this time they’re on the crime pages, as two Americans and two Canadians have been arrested for what government officials call a decade-long narwhal tusk smuggling operation.  As was reported in many Canadian news outlets,

“Gregory and Nina Logan of Grande Prairie, Alta., are facing 28 charges in New Brunswick in connection with the alleged export of the tusks of the narwhal, a threatened Arctic whale, to customers in the U.S. — a violation of Canadian and American laws shaped by CITES, an international treaty that regulates the commercial trade in animal parts of vulnerable species.

“And in December, the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed an indictment alleging that two unnamed Canadians and two U.S. citizens — Andrew Zarauskas of Union, N.J., and Jay Conrad of Lakeland, Tenn. — conspired for close to a decade to transport the valuable whale tusks to U.S. buyers via the Milltown border crossing between St. Stephen, N.B., and Calais, Maine.”

National Geographic photo

           
          I have written about several other cases of illegal sales of narwhal tusks, including a Massachusetts antiques dealer who is now in prison for trafficking in tusks and sperm whale teeth and another instance of a New Mexico woman who was caught with seven illegally-obtained tusks.  But this latest case appears to have involved much more than quietly selling artifacts in an antique store.  This one was a professional smuggling operation that featured the use of a utility trailer modified to conceal the tusks from customs inspections at border crossings.

            Illegal tusk sales and smuggling continue to be a problem in Canada and the United States, and the Canadian government has struggled to come up with a plan agreeable to the local narwhal hunting communities to reduce it.  Federal regulators have proposed what the National Post described as “a tagging system aimed at easing the tracking of individual tusks by placing a permanent identification label on each object. Inuit stakeholders initially expressed concern that the proposed tagging method could devalue tusks, and negotiations on that issue were expected to yield a new tracking system early this year.”  Officials want to implement the new rules, along with a new quota system for hunting narwhals, before the March CITES meeting in Thailand, which could see the U.S. and other countries pushing for a global ban on selling tusks.  Currently, tusks can be sold legally from Canada to many other nations, but the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibits their transport into the U.S., where collectors will pay as much as $10,000 for high quality tusks.

            In 2010, the Canada Department of Fisheries and Oceans placed a ban on any export of narwhal tusks from Canada, citing concerns about the affect of climate change on narwhal populations and the officials’ inability to state that narwhal hunting would not have a further detrimental effect on the health of narwhal populations. That ban was lifted in 2012.

            As I wrote in this blog two years ago, much as I would like to own a tusk and display it on my living room wall as a remarkable object of natural history, I also don’t want to be part of the reason that narwhal numbers decline in the future.  Biologist Kerry Finley told me that as soon as you start putting a price tag on wild animal parts – whether it’s meat, antlers, tusks, gall bladders, or any other part – you put animal populations in jeopardy. That’s something we all should avoid.  In the end, I hope we all can agree that a healthy narwhal population is much more important than having another artifact on our mantle.

Wintering narwhals thrive amid the pack ice

          I’m really beginning to feel the chill here in Rhode Island as we approach the winter solstice and the coldest time of the year. But I’ve got it easy compared to those living in the Arctic.  And yet narwhals seem to thrive at this time of year in the frozen conditions of the waters between Greenland and Baffin Island, Canada. They spend their days repeatedly diving 1,800 meters beneath the surface on a 30-minute round trip to the seafloor in search of food. And if that’s not remarkable enough, they then have to surface for air in tiny openings in the sea ice that are often few and far between.

To get a sense for the habitat narwhals live in during the winter and how many are out there, biologist Kristin Laidre and others flew an aerial survey of the pack ice in late winter 2008 to see for themselves what it looked like.  Flying in a small plane from Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, they flew eight zigzag transects back and forth over the wintering grounds – as many as they could do with the fuel available in such a small plane – before returning to the mainland.

 “During their migration, the ice begins to chase them south and they arrive in their wintering grounds and the ice just forms right around them,” explained Laidre.  “The narwhals become enveloped by the ice.  It’s very dense ice, but it’s moving very fast; there’s a strong current that moves the ice to the south, and the ice floes are constantly changing, the leads are constantly opening and closing.”

Photos by Flip Nicklin

Laidre’s objective in conducting the aerial survey was, in part, to quantify the amount of open water where the narwhals are found.  By combining the data collected on the aerial survey with satellite images of the sea ice, she determined that just two percent of the area surveyed was open water, and there were between 17,000 and 19,000 narwhals there, or 73 narwhals per square kilometer of open water.

“That means you have this large density of animals that need open water to breathe packed into a very small amount of habitat,” she said.  “The overall habitat area is large, but what’s actually usable to them is quite small.”

Listening to Laidre describe what anyone would agree was an immensely challenging environment in which to live, it got me wondering why the narwhals stay there, when just 10 or 20 or 30 miles further south there is far less ice and the living conditions would be much easier with far fewer concerns about a sudden freeze making it impossible to reach the surface for air.  Greenland halibut must surely be found in open water as well as beneath the pack ice, right?  It must be easier living in ice-free water than in the dense ice pack, so why do they remain where the risk of meeting their death in an ice entrapment is so high?

The answer, Laidre said, is partly because that’s simply how they have evolved.  “They really have a niche, they’re totally adapted to this pack ice, more than any other northern hemisphere cetacean, and they don’t have many competitors.  Why go further south when you’re adapted to live in the pack ice and don’t need to go further?  It’s evolution.  They’ve become adapted to being in a certain climate and exploiting it and being successful, and I think that’s just what they’ve done.”

          But there’s more to it than that, she added.  It probably also has a great deal to do with competition and the partitioning of resources.  Narwhals, belugas and bowheads are the only whales that spend their entire lives in the Arctic, but there is a large pool of more southerly whales and marine mammals – minke and fin and humpback and blue and killer whales among them, as well as several varieties of smaller whales, porpoises and seals -- that come to the Arctic in summer to feed in its highly productive ecosystem.  Those subarctic species avoid the Arctic when it’s dark and ice-covered and miserably cold in the winter but move in during the spring and stay throughout the summer and early fall.  The narwhal has developed a strategy to exploit the ecosystem at a time when there are few competitors in an area where they know they have a reliable food supply available.  Belugas and bowheads do the same thing – they feed intensively in the winter and early spring when the other subarctic species aren’t there to compete with them.  And when the ice recedes, the Arctic whales move north just as the slew of subarctic species arrive in the area they just left.
          It is a strategy that has served them well, despite how cold it makes me feel.

Coming soon

           Narwhals have been in the news a great deal lately, but not in the way I would have hoped.  President Barack Obama named his system of tracking election volunteers after the ice whale, and the Natty Narwhal is the codename for a Linux software program that is being replaced this month by an upgraded version named Quetzel.  As those references to narwhals soon fade, I will be making a personal push to deliver some much-needed attention to the real narwhal, an animal whose physical qualities and behavioral abilities far exceed what software marketers and political operatives can even imagine.
            My book, Narwhals: Arctic Whales in a Melting World, is due in stores in the U.S. and Canada by March 1, and it is already available for presale through Amazon.  You can get a flavor for the book by watching the video trailer produced by my friend Rodd Perry, whose company The Ant Farm makes trailers and advertisements for many of the top Hollywood movies.  I’m really pleased with how the trailer turned out, and even more pleased with the book.
            Published by University of Washington Press, it examines in detail the remarkable Arctic whale and the many issues it faces, from a warming climate to hunting pressures, from pollutants in its environment to ice entrapments, from increased oil and mineral exploration to competition for food with a growing fishing industry.  And yet the narwhal seems to thrive in the harsh Arctic conditions, despite these challenges.
            The book takes readers along on my adventures far above the Arctic Circle to see and study narwhals. I joined teams of narwhal researchers who are trying to answer the many questions that remain about the animal’s life cycle; visited the laboratories of a group of dental researchers delving into the mysteries of its tusk; met with the Inuit to learn about narwhal legends and to observe them on their narwhal hunts; examined centuries-old logbooks from whalers and explorers for early observations and insights; and interviewed climate scientists to better understand how changing ice conditions may affect the whales. Along the way I observed and learned about the many other unique animals living in the narwhal’s frozen world, from walruses and polar bears to bowhead and beluga whales, ivory gulls and two kinds of seals.
            I was pleased that one of my favorite authors of marine science books, Carl Safina, offered to read my manuscript before its publication. In his usual eloquent prose, Carl wrote that “Todd McLeish takes us far in several dimensions—across space, through time, and into the interiors of the human mental landscape—to paint a vivid and eloquent portrait of an animal seldom seen, wrongly imagined, and too often mistreated. This is one of those rare books that lifts you up and takes you in.”
            I have had a remarkable four years of research and writing the book, and I hope you’ll soon join me in learning about this iconic animal.

Arctic whales in a melting world

          Readers of this blog may not realize that I’m not just a life-long fan of whales, and narwhals in particular, but I have been writing a book about the amazing sea unicorn and its unusual left tooth. That’s why I traveled to northern Greenland to learn about hunting practices and the importance of narwhals in Inuit culture. It’s why I spent two weeks in a research camp far above the Arctic Circle on Baffin Island, Canada, as scientists attempted to trap live narwhals and attach satellite tags to their dorsal ridge to track their movements during migration. And it’s why I have interviewed numerous others around the globe about narwhal biology, ecology, and physiology, as well as experts on Arctic climate, the science of sea ice and icebergs, the movement of pollutants into the polar regions, and many other topics.
                I am happy to finally report, that after four years of research and writing, the book is in the late stages of production. Entitled Narwhals: Arctic Whales in a Melting World and to be published by University of Washington Press, it is due to be officially released in March 2013, but it will be available to be ordered sometime next month. And I am pleased to make public the final design for the cover, which I am quite happy with (thanks to designer Tom Eykemans). Very soon I’ll have a video trailer to share with you as well, produced by my good friend Rodd Perry at The Ant Farm, one of the most prestigious movie trailer producers in Hollywood.
                When Narwhals is on bookstore shelves and available through Amazon and other outlets, I’ll be making presentations at aquariums, natural history museums, marine conservation organizations, libraries, universities and elsewhere. If you are interested in having me speak in your area, I’d love to hear from you. Perhaps together we can find an appropriate venue to host it.
                In the meantime, visit my website to get up-to-date information about the publication of the book, and follow me on Twitter for the latest details. I’ll continue to share what I learn about narwhals and other marine conservation issues here in this blog, and I hope you will continue to follow along with me. It has been an exciting journey so far, and it’s long from over.

Another season of narwhal tracking

                I was pleased to see that the narwhal tagging research project that I joined on Baffin Island, Canada, in 2010 is underway again this month, and unlike my experience – when we didn’t catch any narwhals for the two weeks I was there – they caught a narwhal on the first day of trapping. The objective of the trapping is to attach radio tracking devices to the whales so they can be monitored to gain insight into their migratory pathways and other behavior.

Photo by Flip Nicklin

            As I wrote a year ago, the value of this kind of work is immeasurable. “You can count whales from the air, you can count them from land, you can see what the herd is doing, but you don’t really get an idea of what an individual does on a daily basis [without tagging them],” said Jack Orr, the chief scientist in charge of the project and a biologist with the Canada Department of Fisheries and Oceans. “These tags provide us information on where they are geographically on the Earth, but we also get an idea of how they use the water column. Tags will tell us how long a whale is at a certain depth, and then we can set up dive profiles…Coupling this with information on water depths and what animals use these depths – we know, for instance, that turbot (Greenland halibut) and crustaceans live on the bottom, we know that squid are pelagic so they’re in the water column – and working with other data on ice and other environmental parameters, we can determine what these animals are doing over the course of a year. It gives us insights into not only its movements but also its behavior.”

            The knowledge gained from this kind of research is particularly useful to understanding population dynamics, which plays an important role in appropriately managing the annual narwhal hunts conducted by the local Inuit communities.  By tracking the movement of individual narwhals, scientists can learn how many hunting villages they travel by during their migration, which gives the researchers an idea of how susceptible the whales are to being killed.  And this can affect the quotas the Canadian government sets for how many narwhals can be hunted by each community.

            Narwhal management and hunting quotas continues to be a sticking point between Inuit hunting communities in the eastern Canadian Arctic and wildlife managers.  The latest government plan is to drill holes at the base of every narwhal tusk harvested and attach a permanent metal tag to it so the tusk can be tracked to ensure the tusk isn’t sold illegally. The Inuit communities disagree with this strategy, but it is an issue that doesn’t appear to be going away.  Just this week, a U.S. appeals court upheld the conviction of an antiques dealer in Massachusetts who illegally sold narwhal tusks and sperm whale teeth.

            Hopefully, as researchers continue this summer to tag and track narwhals, the scientists will gain enough information to be able to manage the narwhal population to ensure their long-term survival.

Tusk export ban lifted, issues remain

The Canadian government announced last week that it has lifted the ban on the export of narwhal tusks that it enacted in 2010 to protect the population of narwhals living in the eastern Canadian Arctic.  Seventeen narwhal hunting communities had been affected by the ban, and all but one – Grise Fjord, which has no known narwhals living in its vicinity – can resume exporting the tusks.

Photo by Paul Nicklen

            With a population of about 80,000 narwhals in the region and annual hunting quotas of just 700 animals, hunting by the Inuit communities should not be causing a decline in the narwhal populations in the area.  But government biologists were concerned enough about hunting pressures to enact the ban, so there are probably other issues at play.  One issue that should be in play but doesn’t appear to have been included in the negotiations to lift the ban is the issue of those narwhals that are “struck and lost.”  Because narwhals are known to sink when they die, Canadian narwhal hunters using rifles to hunt the whales are known to kill far more narwhals than they recover. And those that are struck and lost are not counted toward the quota.

An article in National Geographic magazine in 2007 by photographer Paul Nicklen, who grew up among the Inuit on Baffin Island, graphically illustrates the problem and suggests that hunting practices may need to be reviewed and recordkeeping expanded.  He wrote that during one 12 hour span, he counted 109 rifle shots but just nine narwhals were recovered.  One hunter reported that he killed seven narwhals, all of which sank.  “This was not the first time I had heard reports of many narwhals being shot but few landed.  Just weeks earlier, a man I know to be a skillful hunter confided that he had killed 14 narwhals the previous year but managed to land only one… So much ivory rests on the seafloor, said one hunter, that a salvager could make a fortune,” wrote Nicklen. 

At the very least, Nicklen’s observation suggests that wildlife managers should be paying much closer attention to narwhal hunting and, rather than banning the export of tusks should perhaps lower the quotas until a better system can be developed for accurately tracking the number of narwhals killed by hunters. 

There are plenty of arguments that have been made to eliminate any harvest of narwhals in Canada – including a lack of confidence in the government’s narwhal population estimates, the unfair advantage that hunters with rifles have over the defenseless animals, Canada’s unwillingness to follow the recommendations of the International Whaling Commission, and the belief, outlined in the recently drafted Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans, that whales have complex minds and societies and should be treated more like people than animals. Having spent time among the Inuit and knowing the importance narwhals play in their culture and health and subsistence, I am not ready to argue that hunting should be banned entirely. But I am convinced that the way it is taking place in Canada today is unsustainable and should be thoroughly reassessed.