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 scientists travelled to the eastern coast of Greenland also hoping to see some narwhals. Unlike tourists, however, they had a slightly more unusual task in mind: together with a group of local hunters from the town of Ittoqqortoormiit, they aimed to attach electronic tags that allowed the narwhals to measure water temperature and salinity as they travelled around the region. Their results are now published in the journal Science Advances.
