Bowhead whales overwinter in the Amundsen Gulf and Eastern Beaufort Sea

• Published in: Royal Society Open Science
• Main Authors: S. J. Insley, W. D. Halliday, X. Mouy, N. Diogou
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Royal Society 2021
• Subjects: bowhead whale; migration; acoustic monitoring; sea ice; Science; Q; Arctic; Amundsen Gulf; baleen whale; Beaufort Sea; Climate change; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.202268; https://doaj.org/article/c057d8c2663e41819afe82fdc63df6a6

The bowhead whale is the only baleen whale endemic to the Arctic and is well adapted to this environment. Bowheads live near the polar ice edge for much of the year and although sea ice dynamics are not the only driver of their annual migratory movements, it likely plays a key role. Given the intrinsic variability of open water and ice, one might expect bowhead migratory plasticity to be high and linked to this proximate environmental factor. Here, through a network of underwater passive acoustic recorders, we document the first known occurrence of bowheads overwintering in what is normally their summer foraging grounds in the Amundsen Gulf and eastern Beaufort Sea. The underlying question is whether this is the leading edge of a phenological shift in a species' migratory behaviour in an environment undergoing dramatic shifts due to climate change.