Tracking Narwhal Dietary Responses to Environmental Change Using Stable Strontium Isotopes
Rapid sea-ice loss in the Canadian Arctic is transforming marine mammal ecology, disrupting long-standing patterns of movement and access to food, with implications for health, behaviour and survival. Despite this importance, long-term records are scarce. Because their tusks grow in annual bands, narwhals are a powerful natural archive for investigating ecological change. As a result, Peter Crockford is developing a novel isotope-based dietary proxy and aligning it with existing geolocation frameworks, sea-ice histories and Indigenous knowledge to provide key insights into the multi-decadal shifts in narwhal dietary strategies. His work will help anticipate future ecological change and support Indigenous-led conservation.