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shore birds to polar bears and sea turtles. With each new dis-
covery and each piece of compelling evidence, the necessity of
continuing this research grows more pressing. Scientists say it is
imperative for them to better understand the impact of a warming
climate on individual wildlife species. Accord-
ing to ecologist Erik Beever, it is the respon-
sibility of scientists to learn as much as they
can about how climate change affects wild-
life and habitats. “Because,” he says, “if we
don’t understand how and why species are
being affected, we don’t know what to try to
do with climate [adaptation] management or
conservation.”
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Because the Arctic is heating up twice as
fast as the rest of the world, it is a high priority
for climate change research. Scientists at the University of Cal-
gary in Canada have been studying narwhals, which are a type of
whale with a large protruding “tusk” (actually an enlarged tooth).
This tusklike tooth is so pronounced that narwhals have been
called “unicorns of the sea.” During late summer, the Canadian
Arctic is mostly ice-free, and narwhals swim into deep-water in-
lets along Baffin Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut, where
researchers are able to study them.
One of these researchers is Sandra Black, who is trying to
determine how changes in the Arctic might be affecting narwhals.
“There is this overarching question about what the impacts are
in the Arctic,” says Black. “The question is, will the narwhal be
resilient to the changes that have and will continue to occur?”
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Black’s research is ongoing, and she has not arrived at any de-
finitive conclusions about narwhals’ ability to cope with climate
change. But previous research has shown that warming ocean
waters will kill off fish that narwhals depend on for food, which
would present a serious threat.
Frightening Findings
Some climate change research confirms what scientists already
suspected, while other studies have produced disturbing new
WORDS IN
CONTEXT
narwhal
A whale species
with a protruding
tusklike tooth.
