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Arctic Oasis Sustains Northernmost Inuit Communities and Marine Mammals
The sun hugs the horizon over northern Baffin Bay beyond the village of Grise Fiord in Nunavut, Canada. Along the shoreline just beyond these buildings, a massive pileup of ice forms one border of the North Water Polynya, a richly biodiverse area of open water.
Leah Brown
Fisheries and Oceans Canada
Between Canada and Greenland lies the most biologically productive ecosystem north of the Arctic Circle: an 85,000-square-kilometer (32,800-square-mile) region of ocean known in Greenland as Pikialasorsuaq (the Great Upwelling) and in Canada as Sarvarjuaq.
This marine oasis, which has sustained generations of Inuit hunters and fishers, is kept ice-free by upwellings of relatively warm waters from the Atlantic Ocean. Such open-water areas surrounded by sea ice are called polynyas. In Pikialasorsuaq/Sarvarjuaq, the upwelling allows for an early spring plankton bloom that