Kategorie: News
A New Scene Off the Coast of Greenland
Where pack ice lined the coast just 20 years ago, thousands of baleen whales now gather in the summer. Off the coast of East Greenland, a veritable “feeding community” of three whale species has established itself—a direct result of climate change, as a new study in the journal “Frontiers in Marine Science” shows.
A research team led by Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen of the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources has compiled data over several decades: systematic aerial counts from 2015 and 2024, additional aerial observations from 2022, reports from Inuit hunters between 2023 and 2025, ship sightings dating back to 1987, and satellite data from 15 tagged whales. The result is clear: fin, humpback, and minke whales are now regular visitors to Greenland’s east coast, at least as far north as 70° N—species that historically appeared there only sporadically.
The numbers vividly illustrate this change. Ship-based observations showed not a single humpback whale sighting until 2006; in 2007, there were seven; by 2015, the number had risen to 26; and in 2024, it exceeded 150. In total, researchers estimate that in the summer of 2024, around 4,000 humpback whales, 6,000 fin whales, and about 4,500 minke whales visited the region. In August 2025, a ship’s crew even observed groups of up to 50 animals at a time—north of the Arctic Circle.
A Fish Called Capelin…
What attracts the whales in such large numbers? The answer lies in their stomachs: capelin, a small, cold-water fish, is one of the most important prey species for all three whale species. Since the mid-2000s, capelin have increasingly shifted away from the warming waters north of Iceland toward the Greenland Sea. The whales have apparently followed this shift. According to the study’s estimates, the baleen whales consume a total of about one million metric tons of prey during their roughly four-month summer stay in East Greenland—a significant portion of which is capelin and krill.
This development is driven by two parallel physical changes: The sea surface temperature off East Greenland has risen by about 1 °C since a clear turning point in the late 1990s, and the summer pack ice boundary has retreated significantly northward since the early 2000s. Together, these factors have made it possible for baleen whales to access the coastal waters that were previously covered by ice.
An Ecosystem in Transition
For the researchers, this is more than just a curious footnote: They speak of a “borealization” of the East Greenland ecosystem—temperate species adapted to open water are increasingly displacing ice-bound specialists.
Narwhals, for example, which are traditionally at home in this region and depend on proximity to ice, are now increasingly sharing their habitat with the newly arrived baleen whales or are being displaced in some areas.
At least there is one ray of hope: There is currently no commercial capelin fishery in this area, so competition for food between humans and whales is not an issue at present. Whether this will remain the case as fish stocks—and with them, entire food webs—continue to shift further north is another question. For divers and anyone interested in the future of the Arctic underwater world, the study is yet another striking example of how directly and rapidly climate change can affect entire marine ecosystems.
Source: Heide-Jørgensen et al. (2026): “Feeding frenzies of baleen whales along East Greenland,” Frontiers in Marine Science