After Thousands of Years, An Iconic Whale Confronts a New Enemy
Published:18 Jan.2022 Source:University of Copenhagen - Faculty of Science
For millennia, vast expanses of the Arctic Ocean have been untouched by humans, ocean where narwhals and other marine mammals lived undisturbed. Now that climate change is causing sea ice to melt, there has been an uptick of human activity in the Arctic. This has resulted in significantly more noise from an array of human sources, including seismic surveys, mine blasts, port projects and cruise ships.
Although the noise is not violently loud when it comes a from a fair distance, for narwhals, the noise is disturbing and triggers stress -- even many kilometers away. These are the results of unique experiments conducted with the iconic whale. The University of Copenhagen has helped the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources (Pinngortitaleriffik) to analyse the data collected during the research.