Here's what deep sea ports and military vessels could mean for Arctic marine mammals

Yukon Premier Ranj Pillai says investing in Arctic infrastructure will benefit northerners, but some of those proposed investments will come at a cost to the Arctic's marine mammals.

Premiers are calling for Ottawa to use its defence budget to build Arctic infrastructure, including strengthening Canada's military presence to protect  Arctic sovereignty. This could involve building a deep sea port in the western Arctic to serve as launching point for military submarines in the Beaufort Sea. 

"It's about just ensuring that we have the infrastructure in place every day that improves the lives of everyday northerners," Pillai said.

"Whether that's deep water ports in the Arctic, whether that is grid connections between the territories and provinces, or it means really significant infrastructure into energy projects and telecommunications and roads and airports."

But Whitehorse-based conservation scientist William Halliday is concerned that adding ports and military vessels will harm Arctic marine mammals, like bowhead and beluga whales, narwhals and various species of seal. 

Halliday is the Arctic acoustics program lead with Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Canada. He and his team use underwater acoustic recorders to monitor the Northwest Passage and determine the impacts of vessel traffic on marine mammals. 

"If a port developed and there were 20 more big ships coming through the area in the summer time… that would be roughly a tripling of the number of big ships coming through the area," said Halliday. "And the big ships are the loud ones and the ones that are likely to have the biggest impact."

Ships can be harmful to marine mammals for many reasons. Slow moving whales, like bowheads, can be struck and killed by large ships. And noise from vessels can interrupt their communication and even cause them to alter their behaviour.

Steve Insley, another conservation scientist and the Arctic Canada program director with WCS Canada says noise pollution is particularly harmful underwater. 

"It's a lot worse underwater because the sound travels a lot better. And animals like the marine mammals underwater use that sound to communicate," Insley said. "So it covers up their communication and it can also cover up their ability to hear danger, like predators, for example."

The behavioural changes caused by vessel noise can have a negative effect on the species and the communities that rely on them for subsistence, said Halliday. He has worked with many northern communities along in the western Arctic who rely on marine mammals for food.

"Some species of Arctic marine mammals like beluga and narwhal have been shown to be very sensitive to underwater noise, reacting at distances of 50 kilometres away or more, leaving areas entirely, stopping foraging, and stopping focal vocalizations," Halliday said. 

According to a recent report from the Arctic Policy and Security Observatory at Université du Québec à Montréal, ship traffic in the Canadian Arctic increased in 2024. 

However, there are numerous ways to mitigate the impacts of large ships, and many northern communities are already doing this work, says Halliday.