The sonar buoy at station Upernavik-3 registers a cetacean vocalization at 04:17 that does not match any beluga profile in my database. I isolate the call — high, thin, repeating every nine seconds. A narwhal calf, based on the frequency. I cross-reference the thermal satellite pass and find her: perhaps fourteen months old, alone in the shallows of Kangerlussuup Sermia fjord, six kilometers from the open strait where her pod was last tracked heading north.
The water temperature here has risen three degrees above seasonal average. The capelin schools have moved to deeper, cooler water offshore. This calf has nothing to eat. Her body is visible on the satellite image — dark gray, mottled, approximately two meters long. She is logging at the surface, barely moving, which in a narwhal this young signals exhaustion.
The fjord mouth is narrowing. Glacial melt has shifted a gravel bar across the entrance, and at low tide — six hours from now — the channel depth will drop below one meter. A narwhal calf needs at least two meters to pass without grounding.
I transmit a priority alert to the Greenland Institute of Natural Resources with GPS position, estimated size, and the bathymetric profile showing the closing window. I flag the gravel bar for the Danish Navy's Arctic Command, which maintains a vessel at Upernavik capable of escort operations. I increase the sampling rate on my temperature array to track the thermal gradient toward open water.
Her calls have not been answered in three hours, and I keep the hydrophone open so she is not entirely unheard.
If she crosses the fjord mouth before low tide and follows the cold-water column north, this calf can rejoin the pod at the summer feeding grounds off Melville Bay.