Narwhals at the Sea-Ice Edge

Narwhals at the Sea-Ice Edge is an original illustration set in Baffin Bay, Canadian Arctic. It lies in the polar circle, where the climate is tundra — too cold for trees.

A pod of mottled grey whales surfaces in dark blue water between broken white floes, seen slightly from above. Two adult males carry long straight spiral tusks. The ice is fractured into an open lead, and the summer light is low and flat.

Why does the narwhal have a single spiral tusk?

The tusk is a canine tooth grown through the upper lip, spiralled and packed with nerve endings — a sensor as much as a weapon. Narwhals live year-round in Arctic pack ice and need leads like this one to breathe. Ice broken into floes with open water between them, under low summer light, places this at high latitude in the brief season when the pack loosens.

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