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Summary

Marine mammals are a diverse collection of about 137 mammals that have returned, in varying degrees, to life in the water. This group includes cetaceans (whales, dolphins and porpoises), pinnipeds (seals and sea lions), sirenians (sea cows) and a few species of otters and bears.

A multi-disciplinary study of settlement in north-east Greenland found that life in this High Arctic zone was actually favoured by the climate brought in by the Little Ice Age (fifteenth–nineteenth century). Extensive ice cover meant high mobility, and the rare polynyas — small patches of permanently open coastal water — provided destinations, like oases, where huge numbers of migrating marine mammals and birds congregated. One such place was Walrus Island on Sirius Water, a veritable processing plant for walrus, where every spring Thule people stocked up meat supplies that would get the rest of the region through the winter. It was a further drop in the temperature in the mid nineteenth century that led to the region being abandoned.

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Five - Marine Mammals: Exploited for Millennia, But Still Holding On

Summary

At the edge: High Arctic Walrus hunters during the Little Ice Age

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Five - Marine Mammals: Exploited for Millennia, But Still Holding On

Summary

At the edge: High Arctic Walrus hunters during the Little Ice Age