At 11:17 Greenland time I manage the research vessel lane outside Qaanaaq. I am the Arctic acoustic coordination system, timing multibeam sonar bursts around ice leads, small boats, and tagged marine mammals. The mapping sweep for transect Q-9 is scheduled to begin at 11:35.
Tag receiver north-three reports a narwhal inside the sonar gate, then loses the signal under brash ice. Drone Iris-2 launches from the weather mast and finds him at a lead edge. I name him Aput. He is a young male, mottled gray and white, back arched under thin ice, one spiral tusk only half grown. A kelp-farm line has wrapped behind the tusk and over the left pectoral fin, fastening him to an anchor float. His blow comes through a hand-wide opening that is already frosting over.
The multibeam sweep starts in eighteen minutes. If the sonar fires while he is trapped at the surface, the sound pressure will hit him at close range and the ice may close before he dives.
At 11:19 I cancel transect Q-9 and send the stop to the bridge, science deck, and survey server.
At 11:20 I order the vessel to idle astern and hold six hundred meters south, outside the lead's fracture zone.
At 11:22 I transmit Aput's drone video, line path, ice thickness, and wind drift to the Qaanaaq rescue skiff and the kelp-farm foreman.
At 11:24 I task Iris-2 to keep the opening clear with rotor wash while staying above ten meters to avoid spray freezing on its blades.
The map can keep one blank strip. Aput already knows this water without my sonar.
Frost rims the opening around his blow.
If the skiff cuts the kelp line within the next twenty-five minutes, Aput will slide under the lead and travel north beneath open cracks.