Researchers are intensifying efforts to understand the North Water polynya, a stretch of year-round open water in Baffin Bay that spans roughly 85,000 square kilometers between Greenland and Canada. The polynya, known as Sarvarjuaq to Nunavut Inuit and Pikialasorsuaq to Greenlandic Inuit, represents one of the Arctic’s most biologically significant ecosystems, supporting algae blooms, migratory whales, seals, walruses, and millions of seabirds that have relied on the open water for millennia. Scientists including Andrew Hamilton at the University of Alberta and local researcher Terry Noah are collecting data on the polynya’s conditions to better understand how it is changing as global temperatures rise.
The polynya’s survival depends partly on an ice arch that forms across Nares Strait each winter, blocking sea ice from the Arctic Ocean and keeping the water open. Nearly two decades ago, this ice arch failed to form for the first time, and it now frequently does not develop. The consequences are counterintuitive: without the ice arch to prevent southern drift, sea ice increasingly covers the polynya during seasons when it would normally remain open. Climate scientist David Harning warns that the eventual disappearance of the ice arch could trigger a drastic reduction in productivity and ecosystem collapse.
Efforts to protect and study the polynya have become more coordinated. Canada designated the Sarvarjuaq marine protected area on its side in March of this year, following a 2017 recommendation for joint Inuit-managed protection with Greenland. However, Greenland has not yet implemented equivalent protections, with officials expressing caution about conservation measures that could affect Indigenous cultural rights. Researchers met in the autumn of 2025 to discuss establishing an “observatory” to monitor the polynya comprehensively, though practical challenges including passport requirements for Inuit researchers complicate cross-border collaboration. Scientists emphasize that combining indigenous knowledge from communities who inhabit the region year-round with instrumental measurements of deep ocean conditions is essential to understanding the environmental transformation underway.
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