The return of the narwhal, the tusked whale of northern polar seas, is a long-anticipated event in the Canadian Arctic. After months of darkness and temperatures as low as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit, winter gives way to spring, and the sea ice covering Lancaster Sound begins to splinter. Open stretches of water, called leads, become travel lanes for the small whales as they follow the retreating sea ice toward their ancestral summering grounds around Baffin Island. In remote Inuit communities such as Pond Inlet and Arctic Bay, news of the narwhals’ arrival stirs hunters to reach for their rifles and head for the ice edge.
Swarming into an ice hole, males wield their tusks with care. The tusk, a tooth growing out of the upper jaw, is almost exclusively a male trait. Scientists believe it serves a display function, much like the antlers of a stag.
