The Narwhal is a small toothed whale weighing about a ton up to 3000 pounds. This is the approximate size of a gray whale baby who is a month old. The characteristic horn is actually a tooth (usually located on the left side) that continues to grow, until it reaches a maximum length of 10 feet. Stories of the magical unicorn probably originated from the discovery of the narwhal tooth by European explorers and traders. Only one in four females have this tusk. The females generally display a shorter 3 to 4 foot long tusk. These whales normally swim in small pods of 2 to 12. Sometimes a Narwhal will have two tusks. They are found in the most northern Arctic waters. Baffin Island has an extremely small population of just over 20,000 people and covers an area of almost 200,000 square miles. That is larger than California, but a bit smaller than Texas. Pond Inlet has a population of about 1,500 and excluding the 4 cruise boats receives only about 150 tourist visits each year. Koluctoo Bay where we will camp and whale watch only receives visits from a dozen or two dozen tourist adventurers each year. This is a really remote place. Ten action packed days exploring an arctic wilderness that is home to an assortment of birds and mammals. This is an adventure that you will never forget! Most of the Arctic adventure trips available give you less than the intimate up close contact with the Arctic that our trip will provide. The small cruise ship offerings give you a few hours each day ashore. Much of the nature watching takes place from the deck of the ship. That type of experience is better than a walk in the park back home, but it is not the best Arctic Nature Adventure you can have. Your chances of seeing a narwhal, even in the distance are very low. Many other land tours take you to locations closer to developed area, where the wildlife and the surrounding countryside is less pristine. Other Arctic tours take you in the winter or spring when travel is over rugged ice, using sleds. The sled trips will put you close to wild animals and nature, but at an extremely cold time of the year. The weather for the floe edge trips can be really intense dropping to -20 degrees or lower and with 20 to 40 mile an hour winds not unusual. The third type of Arctic trip, closest to our trip, but vastly different, is the Arctic trek. Usually done in July, August or September these trips require you to hike to the destination. That puts you in close contact with the countryside. Sometimes too close. In the summer there are many streams and patches of flowing water to cross. When traveling on foot you will be splashing or wading through this ice cold water. Plus hiking limits just where you can get to in the time available. By traveling to our base camp over the water using a motor boat we can reach the best location for our nature viewing in a very short time. You cannot hike to our location from any regular airfield. Last year the researchers whose camp is just a half kilometer from our campsite were weather bound for about 4 days, because of low cloud cover. We were able to safely travel by our boat back to Pond Inlet, but the researchers ended up missing their flights. I’m pretty well convinced the boat is the very best transportation for our purposes on this trip. Curious why Baja Jones is going to Canada? The truth is Baja Jones Adventures was founded by Keith Jones who has always been an adventurer obsessed by his interest in marine wildlife. This obsession led him first to Baja, Mexico and to the operation of an adventure travel service designed to bring people up close and personal with marine mammals. Our Gray Whale trips are non-stop from January through the end of March. Keith is on the water with the gray whales and tour groups nearly every day during this time. Once the Gray whales leave Baja, Keith goes off in search of other “up close and personal” marine mammal encounters. This is his life and this is why you will find Baja Jones in Canada, South America, Asia and wherever there are whales.