Over the past two decades, changes in sea temperature and sea-ice conditions have driven profound ecological shifts along the coast of East Greenland. One of the most conspicuous developments has been the recent and widespread occurrence of boreal baleen whale species in coastal waters. Fin whales, humpback whales, and minke whales now regularly feed along the East Greenland coast, at least as far north as 70°N and likely beyo...

Introduction Age estimation is an important tool for understanding the life history of animal populations, and several techniques have been developed, each with its own strengths and limitations. Methods In this study, we apply a novel age estimation method that utilizes trace element signals with seasonal components obtained through laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) on tusks of 16 narwhal...

One of the last pristine marine soundscapes, the Arctic, is exposed to increasing anthropogenic activities due to climate-induced decrease in sea ice coverage. In this study, we combined movement and behavioral data from animal-borne tags in a controlled sound exposure study to describe the reactions of narwhals, Monodon monoceros , to airgun pulses and ship noise. Sixteen narwhals were live captured and instrumented with sate...

Deep diving air-breathing species by necessity must balance submergence time and level of exercise during breath-holding: a low activity level preserves oxygen stores and allows longer duration submergence whereas high activity levels consume oxygen quickly and shorten submergence time. In this study, we combined high-resolution multi sensor animal-borne tag data to investigate diving behavior and locomotion styles of the narw...

The power spectrum provides a compact representation of the scale dependence of the variability in time series. At multi-millennial time scales the spectrum of the Pleistocene climate is composed of a set of narrow band spectral modes attributed to the regularly varying changes in insolation from the astronomical change in Earth’s orbit and rotation superimposed on a continuous background generally attributed to stochastic var...

Eyeballs from 121 fin whales ( Balaenoptera physalus ) and 83 harbor porpoises ( Phocoena phocoena ) were used for age estimation using the aspartic acid racemization (AAR) technique. The racemization rate ( k A sp ) for fin whales was established from 15 fetuses (age 0) and 15 adult whales where age was estimated by reading growth layer groups (GLGs) in the earplugs. The ( k A sp ) for harbor porpoises was derived from 15 por...