Tenna Boye – Scientifique au Greenland Insitute of Natural Resources

Nuuk – Latitude 64° 10’ N – Longitude 051° 44’ W

18 000 habitants

Propos recueillis en septembre 2010

In the course of my recent research on the humpback whale, I noticed that when the whales are approached by motorised vessels, their behaviour changes radically. At that moment, they swim much faster, and their frequency of coming to the surface reduces by half. They also stop eating.

We are now working on this data, and on the ways to pass this message on to the local people and the tourists.

For the great majority, it is the same whales which return every year to our coast. They come here only to eat. When they migrate towards the south, they go to mate, to give birth, but they no longer eat. They arrive here as from the middle of May, and they leave in the month of October. The number of whales in 2010 is in line with 2007, but in 2008 there were an enormous number of whales. My theory is that they simply follow the species on which they feed. They go south as far as Silver Bank in the Caribbean, although some have also been observed at Cap Verde. In the Caribbean they meet the whales which have come from the coasts of America and Canada. 

For most of them, they then make their way north back to Greenland. The American whales also return home. It is very rare for a whale to completely change the place of its summer migration.

Last June, after long debates within the International Whaling Commission, Greenland obtained the authorisation to hunt nine humpback whales (“Megaptera Novaeangliae”), which had been protected and totally banned from hunting since 1988.