ABSTRACT. The bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) is a planktivore of the baleen group of whales adapted to live in the loose edges of the north polar sea ice. Its annual migrations roughly track the advance and retreat of the floe edge. The distribution and radiocarbon ages of bowhead subfossils in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago show that the range of the whale has expanded and contracted abruptly several times over the last 10.5 thousand years (ka). Each expansion or contraction was followed by nearly stable conditions that persisted for millennia.These changes in the geographic range of the bowhead are defined by > 400 radiocarbon dates. The paleo-ranges are the basis for reconstructing summer sea-ice minima. Using this criterion, postglacial time is divided into four intervals: (1) 10.5-8.5 ka B.P.-A large bowhead population extended in the summer all the way to retreating glacier margins and ultimately from the Beaufort Sea to Baffin Bay; meltwater-driven outflows probably cleared the inter-island channels of sea ice; this interval terminated when the present interglacial circulation pattern was established; (2) 8.5-5 ka B.P.-Bowheads were excluded from most of the archipelago because the channels failed to clear of sea ice; summer sea-ice conditions for most of this time were more severe than during historical times; (3) 5-3 ka B.P.-Bowheads reoccupied the central channels of the Arctic Islands, and their range extended beyond historical limits; and (4) 3-0 ka B.P.-Sea ice excluded whales from the central channels, as it does today.This paleoenvironmental record based on bowhead whale distributions is more complex than that revealed in the δ 18O, conductivity or the percent-melt records of the Devon and Agassiz ice cores. A reconciliation of the two data sets may indicate the following general summer climatic conditions: 10-8 ka B.P.-warm summers with maximum postglacial warmth; 8-5 ka B.P.-cool, dry summers; 5-3 ka B.P.-cool, wet summers; 3-0 ka B.P.-cold, dry summers.Key words: bowhead whale, sea ice, ocean currents, climate change RÉSUMÉ. La baleine boréale (Balaena mysticetus) est un planctivore du groupe des baleines à fanons adapté à la vie dans les écotones fluctuants de la banquise polaire septentrionale. Ses migrations annuelles suivent approximativement l'avance et le retrait de la zone de dislocation. La distribution et la datation au radiocarbone de subfossiles de la baleine boréale dans l'archipel canadien Arctique montrent que l'aire de la baleine s'est plusieurs fois étendue et rétrécie soudainement au cours des derniers 10,5 milliers d'années (Ka). Chaque extension ou rétrécissement a été suivi de conditions relativement stables qui ont duré plusieurs millénaires.Ces variations de l'aire géographique de la baleine boréale sont définies par la datation au radiocarbone > 400. Les paléo-aires constituent la base à partir de laquelle on reconstruit les minima de banquise estivale. En se servant de ce critère, on divise le temps postglaciaire en quatre intervalles: 1) de 10,5 à 8,5 Ka BP -En été...

The Late Wisconsinan and Holocene record of the Atlantic walrus is known from numerous collections of bones and tusks from Arctic Canada and south to North Carolina, as well as from many archaeological sites in the Arctic and Subarctic. In contrast, the Pacific walrus has no dated Late Wisconsinan or early Holocene record in North America, and it may have been displaced into the northwest Pacific at Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). The Atlantic walrus rapidly exploited newly deglaciated territory, moving northward from its LGM refugium and reaching the Bay of Fundy by 12 800 B.P., the Grand Banks by 12 500 B.P., southern Labrador by 11 500 B.P., and the central Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA) by 9700 B.P. Its southern range limit may have retracted to the Bay of Fundy by ca. 7500 B.P. Within the CAA, walrus remains cluster in two main age groups: 9700 to 8500 B.P. and 5000 to 4/3000 B.P. This pattern strongly resembles the distribution of bowhead whale radiocarbon ages from the same area, which suggests a common control by sea-ice conditions. Walrus remains occur in Indian culture archaeological sites as old as 7500 B.P. and, in some cases (Namu, British Columbia, and Mackinac Island, Michigan), they evidently represent long-distance human transport. They are much more common in Paleoeskimo and Neoeskimo culture sites. However, they occur in very low abundances, and generally as debitage, in sites older than Dorset (2500 B.P.). The walrus, therefore, may not have been hunted by early Paleoeskimos. Beginning with Early Dorset, walrus remains occur in definite diet-related contexts. Middle Dorset (2300 to 1500 B.P.) and late Thule (<400 B.P.) sites are missing from the High Arctic, and there may be a similar gap in the middle Pre-Dorset (3400 to 2600 B.P.

Twenty-two pairs of radiocarbon dates on driftwood and bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) bones from raised beaches, dates on whale bone and terrestrial plant detritus from a stratigraphie section, and 25 additional dates on whale bones from the lowest (≤1 ka BP) raised beaches in the eastern Canadian Arctic suggest that a marine reservoir correction of about −200 years is appropriate for normalized age determinations on bone collagen from the bowhead whale in this region. This is less than the correction (−400 years) normally applied to carbonate shells of marine molluscs from this region. The carbon in bowhead collagen appears to be derived from the whales' zooplankton food rather than from marine bicarbonate.

Abstract. Internally consistent, quality-controlled (QC) data products play an important role in promoting regional-to-global research efforts to understand societal vulnerabilities to ocean acidification (OA). However, there are currently no such data products for the coastal ocean, where most of the OA-susceptible commercial and recreational fisheries and aquaculture industries are located. In this collaborative effort, we compiled, quality-controlled, and synthesized 2 decades of discrete measurements of inorganic carbon system parameters, oxygen, and nutrient chemistry data from the North American continental shelves to generate a data product called the Coastal Ocean Data Analysis Product in North America (CODAP-NA). There are few deep-water (> 1500 m) sampling locations in the current data product. As a result, crossover analyses, which rely on comparisons between measurements on different cruises in the stable deep ocean, could not form the basis for cruise-to-cruise adjustments. For this reason, care was taken in the selection of data sets to include in this initial release of CODAP-NA, and only data sets from laboratories with known quality assurance practices were included. New consistency checks and outlier detections were used to QC the data. Future releases of this CODAP-NA product will use this core data product as the basis for cruise-to-cruise comparisons. We worked closely with the investigators who collected and measured these data during the QC process. This version (v2021) of the CODAP-NA is comprised of 3391 oceanographic profiles from 61 research cruises covering all continental shelves of North America, from Alaska to Mexico in the west and from Canada to the Caribbean in the east. Data for 14 variables (temperature; salinity; dissolved oxygen content; dissolved inorganic carbon content; total alkalinity; pH on total scale; carbonate ion content; fugacity of carbon dioxide; and substance contents of silicate, phosphate, nitrate, nitrite, nitrate plus nitrite, and ammonium) have been subjected to extensive QC. CODAP-NA is available as a merged data product (Excel, CSV, MATLAB, and NetCDF; https://doi.org/10.25921/531n-c230, https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/data/oceans/ncei/ocads/metadata/0219960.html, last access: 15 May 2021) (Jiang et al., 2021a). The original cruise data have also been updated with data providers' consent and summarized in a table with links to NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) archives (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/ocean-acidification-data-stewardship-oads/synthesis/NAcruises.html).