Qaanaaq

In the Qaanaaq region there are two Seatrack field sites: (1) Hakluyt Island where we instrument Brünnich’s guillemots and kittiwakes, and (2) the mountain slopes above the settlement Siorapaluk (77°47′N 70°37′W) where we instrument little auk.

Both Hakluyt Island and Siorapaluk are part of the very productive North Water (NOW) Polynya area (https://conferences.au.dk/now). This High Arctic polynya is kept open by wind and currents, and have a long productive season compared to the surrounding seas.  Most of the little auks in the world breeds in NOW (an estimated 33 mill. Pairs), as well as most of Greenland’s Brünnich’s guillemots (411 000 pairs) and many kittiwakes (48 400 pairs). The Brünnich’s guillemots population appear to be stable in the NOW area, while it is declining in most of the other colonies in Greenland.

Hakluyt Island (77° 26’ N, 72° 42’ W) with the Greenlandic name Appaarsuit is a small (4.8 x 2.2 km) uninhabited island between Greenland and Canada peaking at 421m, and it is the northernmost colony of Brünnich’s guillemots in the western Atlantic. There are steep cliff faces with Brünnich’s guillemots and kittiwake ledges mainly along the northern side. The island contains about 15 700 pairs of kittiwakes, and 59 500 pairs of Brünnich’s guillemots  nesting  from  about  25  to  400  m above  sea level. Seabird research started on Hakluyt island in 1996-1998, followed up with regular monitoring from 2007  – and Seatrack from 2021.

The mountain slopes along the coast near the settlement of Siorapaluk (77°47′N 70°37′W) holds more or less continuous concentrations of little auks breeding among the scree. Studies of little auk at the fieldsite above the settlement includes sampling of chick meals consisting of large zooplankton brought by the adults to the nest sites. Seatrack instrumentation at the field sites began in 2021.