Facing Baffin Bay along the eastern coast of Baffin Island, Isabella Bay—known in Inuktitut as Ninginganiq, “the place where fog sits”—is one of the Arctic’s most important marine sanctuaries. Designated in 2010 as Canada’s first Marine National Wildlife Area and its largest, the protected waters were established in partnership with the Inuit community of Clyde River to safeguard a critical habitat.

The meeting of wind, current, and seafloor topography creates ideal feeding grounds for bowhead whales of the Eastern Canada–West Greenland population. In late summer, between 1,500 and 2,000 of these immense Arctic mammals gather to rest and feed, forming the largest documented concentration of bowhead whales in Canadian waters.

Once heavily hunted in Baffin Bay during the height of commercial whaling, bowhead populations declined dramatically. Their gradual recovery makes this protected refuge all the more significant today.

There are no permanent settlements within Isabella Bay’s boundaries—only open sea, low-lying islands, drifting fog, and a vast Arctic horizon. The slow arc of a whale’s back breaking the surface is often the only movement across the water.

Ninginganiq is a place of marine abundance and enduring Inuit stewardship—one of the North’s most consequential living ecosystems.