"Scientists say increasing shipping traffic is interfering with the whales’ ability to hunt and communicate. To protect the animals, conservation groups are urging the International Maritime Organization to instate mandatory measures to reduce underwater noise."
"For most of their evolutionary history, narwhals have relied more on sound than sight to survive in the Arctic’s dark icy waters.
The speckled toothed whales—sometimes referred to as “unicorns of the sea” for the long, spiral tusks that protrude from the heads of males—navigate, hunt and communicate using echolocation. By emitting a series of calls, whistles and high frequency clicks—as many as a thousand per second—and listening for the echoes that bounce back, they are able to locate prey hundreds to thousands of feet deep and detect narrow cracks in sea ice where they can surface to breathe.
But as global temperatures continue to rise, the acoustic world narwhals depend on is rapidly shifting throughout their range, from northeastern Canada and Greenland to Norway’s Svalbard archipelago and Arctic waters in Russia. It’s getting louder.
The Arctic is warming at least three times faster than the rest of the planet, and as sea ice continues to shrink, vast stretches of ocean, once inaccessible to most humans, are opening up. Over the past decade, cargo vessels, fishing fleets, cruise ships and oil and gas tankers have started moving through the region with increasing frequency and ease."
Teresa Tomassoni reports for Inside Climate News February 2, 2026.
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