Whales are turning a once-icy stretch of East Greenland into a seasonal all-you-can-eat buffet. A new study in Frontiers in Marine Science finds that as sea ice rapidly retreats, humpback, fin, and minke whales—all types of baleen whales—are streaming into coastal waters that were long off-limits to them, the BBC reports. Ship surveys saw no humpbacks there before 2006; in 2007, researchers logged seven. By 2024, that number had jumped to 150 sightings, with scientists estimating that about 4,000 humpbacks, 6,000 fin whales, and 6,000 minkes now visit the Greenland Sea each summer.
Using aerial counts, satellite-linked tags on 15 whales, and reports from Inuit hunters, researchers say the whales are chasing fish and krill that have followed the warming waters, consuming nearly 900,000 tons of prey each season. Phys.org notes that the Arctic and North Atlantic are among the fastest-warming regions on Earth. Lead researcher Mads Peter Heide-Jorgensen of the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources calls it a “major ecological regime shift,” possibly one of the starkest in the sub-Arctic. The influx raises questions about whether whale numbers are rising overall or simply relocating, a sensitive issue in a country where some whales are hunted. However, while the newcomers appear to be adapting, Arctic specialists like narwhals and belugas are seeing their habitat squeezed.