The Green Rocket

Polar bears may get more attention – and later this week a court-ordered decision by the US government will almost certainly see them listed as a threatened species – but new research suggests the narwhal, the mysterious whale with a long spiral tusk, may be more at risk from climatic change. Researchers fear that the narwhal is so attuned to its environment, so narrow in its range of habitat and specific in diet, that it may be one of the least able of Arctic mammals to adapt to rapid warming in the high north.

Unlike the polar bear, which is widely distributed in the circumpolar region, the narwhal population is concentrated in a relatively small area between Baffin Island and Greenland. With a small population of no more than 80,000 individuals, narwhals stick closely to established migratory patterns and are more narrowly distributed than the two other Arctic whales, the bowhead and beluga.

Any change in the distribution of heavy winter pack ice is likely to adversely affect the whale, which feeds primarily in the cold and darkness of winter and can dive down in excess of 1,500 metres (5,000ft) in search of its favourite prey – the Greenland halibut – with a second-order preference for cod and squid.

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