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MITTIMATALIK/POND INLET - Pond Inlet hunters have brought in the last few narwhal trapped by the winter freeze-up, in a cull that has amounted to 629 whales harvested - the largest bounty in decades.

Thick ice stranded the whales a few kilometres off Bylot Island offshore from Pond Inlet in mid-November. The growing ice trapped the whales in a three-kilometre stretch of breathing holes that progressively froze up as the weather grew colder.

Normally the narwhal would have migrated to their wintering area in Baffin Bay but were trapped for unknown reasons.

"It's an unusual occurrence," said Keith Pelley, Eastern Arctic area manager for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. "But it's not unknown."

As the whales were doomed to starve or drown as their last breathing holes disappeared under growing ice, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Nunavut Wildlife Management Board and local elders agreed the most humane thing to do was to allow local hunters to harvest the whales, granting a special exception to the yearly harvesting quota.

Members of the Mittimatalik Hunters and Trappers Organization (HTO) spent two weeks killing the whales, pulling them out of the water and harvesting the meat. Harvesters are still putting in 12-hour days processing the carcasses, said Jayko Alooloo, HTO chair.

Pond Inlet's experienced hunters took the opportunity to teach local youth, taking turns shooting, pulling and harvesting the whales under safe supervision.

Alooloo said time is of the essence where harvesting is concerned. Hunters shoot the whales and insert a hook into the animal's flesh to pull it out of the water. Adult males can weigh up to 1,600 kilograms. A team works together to pull the animal up as fast as they can, either by hand or using a snowmobile. It's important to move quickly so as little blood as possible gets into the water, said Alooloo. Too much blood will frighten other narwhal away from the breathing hole.

Once the whale is on the ice, the team must work to cut the meat before it freezes. The maktaaq off an average adult narwhal is worth roughly $1,000. There is far more meat and maktaaq to go around than the hamlet of 1,800 can use so the Mittimatalik HTO has started selling it to other communities.

There have been requests from the Northwest Territories and Nunavik as well about sharing the harvest.

Pond Inlet hunters are usually allowed to harvest 130 narwhal per year, but for the last five years the annual take has been 70. This year looked more productive with 90 tags used before the narwhal entrapment occurred.

Some southern environmental and animal rights groups had called for an icebreaker ship to free the whales rather than allow them to die. This was not an option, according to Pelley.

He said narwhal are notoriously skittish around noisy boat motors and the sound of an icebreaker vessel's approach would likely drive the whales away from their breathing holes and to their deaths. As well, the time it would have taken an icebreaker to reach the remote location and the cost of such an expedition made it unfeasible.

The whales are part of a narwhal population based out of the Eclipse Sound area, estimated at 20,000 to 21,000. Pelley said the 600-whale harvest will not have a significant impact on the population's numbers.

Narwhal are small single-tusked whales ranging in size from one-metre-long infants to adults up to five metres long, not including the tusk, which can be up to three metres long. Female narwhal typically produce a calf every three years.

The last time such a large whale entrapment occurred in Canada was in 1926 when roughly 600 whales were trapped in Admiralty Inlet west of Baffin Island's northern tip.