Hello, and Happy Earth Day! We have been tracking narwhals for many years all over the Arctic but we have only been trying to catch them and track them from the place I am located right now (a town of 69 people called Niaqornat in Greenland) for 2 years. Narwhals can swim up to 100 miles in 24 hours when they are migrating, but usually they are slower than that. Besides the location of narwhals, we get information on how deep the narwhals dive (they go down to 4,000 feet below the surface) and what the temperature of the water is.

Hi Devin! It might hurt the narwhals a little bit when their tooth starts growing, kind of like it did when your teeth first started growing.  But the boy narwhals are very competitive and they all want to have the biggest tusk to impress the girls.  That's why, after lots of generations, the tusks evolve to be very, very long.
Yes, I use lots of math in my job.  We have to answer questions like: "How many narwhals are there?", "How fast are they swimming?", "How deep are they diving?", "How much are they eating?". All of these are collected as numbers.  We call those numbers "data".  Math is a language that scientists use to understand their data, so it is very important.

Hi Ana! Yes, I've been to the Arctic many times, and I'm there now! The Arctic is all the land, sea, and ice that is at the top of the globe, so far north that you can see the sun in the sky all day in the summer, and not at all in the winter.  That's where the narwhals live!

Hi there Laura! I had lots of pets when I was young - 2 dogs, a cat, a guinea pig, a rabbit, several hamsters, and some fish. Even a bird. I loved pets!

A narwhal tooth will not grow back if it breaks, so when that happens they just swim around with a broken tusk for the rest of their lives.

A narwhal can live to be over 100 years old but most of the grown-up narwhals are between 30 and 70 years old.

Hi Katy! I am not in Greenland yet for this trip, I will go there early next week for about 2 weeks. When I go, I stay for up to 6 weeks at a time.

Hi Charlotte! I like to catch narwhals because they are interesting to see up close. Also, they live in a very beautiful place: the Arctic.

Thanks for asking such good questions, Grace! Some people think that the tusk is a weapon or a tool, but really its just a decoration for the boy narwhals.  Kind of like boy peacocks have giant tails and boy lions have big manes.  I guess the girls think they're cute that way.  My favorite thing about being a marine biologist is seeing all sorts of neat animals, like polar bears and whales and seals, in the wild. But I also like learning new things about the world.  That's something all scientists get to do.  The hardest part is that where I work sometimes it gets really, really, really cold!  Also, I sometimes have to be away from home a long time.

Hi Maddie! I have lots of warm clothes, my boots, and a book to read when the weather is bad.

We find them from a helicopter and shoot a dart into them that makes them fall asleep. Then we put a collar around their neck and they wake up. But don't get any ideas, Marvin!

I'll be listening to narwhals under the sea ice with a hydrophone (like a microphone but for underwater animals). I will also be tagging polar bears.

Good question, Puck and Sis! I study the whales, seals and sea otters and their environment. Most of my time (about nine months of the year) I’m in my office writing and looking at data, making models and planning talks. The other three months of the year I am in the field, where I am camping or living on a boat and observing, counting, catching or tagging marine mammals.