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MITTIMATALIK/POND INLET - Of the 629 narwhal carcasses now sitting frozen to the sea ice near Pond Inlet, 25 will be removed and taken to the Inuit-owned lands area of Bylot Island south of Sirmilik National Park.

They will be left there and nature will take its course: scavengers and insects will pick at the leftover flesh and sinews of the carcasses until their skeletons are clean and white. There the bones will remain as a permanent reminder of a time when the maktaaq never ran out in Pond Inlet.

Mittimatalik HTO chair Jayko Alooloo says most narwhal remains to be disposed of into sea. - NNSL file photo

"We wanted to keep 25 bones (skeletons) for future generations, so we remember, for grandchildren and tourists," said Mittimatalik Hunters and Trappers Organization chairman Jayko Alooloo.

The carcasses are the remains of the narwhals harvested last November after they were trapped by thickening ice. The community is still dining on the maktaaq of that epic labour, maktaaq which was also shared with other Inuit communities as far away as the NWT and Nunavik.

Alooloo said the HTO plans to set up a sign with a notice in front of the bones, telling the story of the harvest and what it meant to the community.

The Mittimatalik HTO recently got permission to dispose of the remainder of the carcasses by breaking the ice and giving the whales' bodies back to the sea. Because the ocean is not covered under the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, the HTO needed the permission of federal government agencies to dispose of the remains in the sea.

Alooloo anticipates the carcasses will feed shrimp and other sea creatures at the sea floor.

Disposing of the remains "will be hard work," said Alooloo. "There is a lot of hard ice around the carcasses. The ice is three to four feet (roughly one metre) thick. That will be hard work for the hunters."