Detecting sperm whales in the eastern Canadian Arctic as sea-ice continues to melt

Marine environments in the Arctic regions continue to be altered due to prolonged durations of sea ice absence, as a result of climate change. Seasonal shifts of habitat use occur as warmer, ice-free regions become available to many ice avoiding marine mammals. In this study, authors combined collected sighting- and acoustic data, including whaling records accessed through the OBIS database, to explore the range expansion of the ice-avoiding sperm whale in the Eclipse Sound area, Baffin Bay. Sperm whale presence in Eclipse Sound is a recent phenomenon, with only two sighting records of these mammals in this region, in 2014 and 2018, respectively. However, acoustic recordings reveal that sperm whales are present in this region yearly between 2015 and 2019 and that there has been an increase in sperm whale presence over the 5 year study period, closely related to the minimum sea ice concentration of each year.