washing narwhal tusks

This guy was washing his narwhal tusks in the stream that runs through town. He had six of them. I am a bit confused about narwhals, they are not listed as endangered or at risk, but only Inuit can hunt them. In fact, it seems that there just isn't all that much information about them, nobody really knows how many of them there are. So perhaps they are protected from indiscriminate hunting just in case, by a society that puts care of the environment above immediate gain, and moves cautiously and wisely before endangering the delicate balance of nature.
Just kidding.
The Inuit hunt them for their meat and blubber, which they do love to eat, but the really valuable part is the tusk. They need to be registered and tagged before they can be sold, so they have to pass through the co-op, which I guess then resells them for more money. We saw the prices they go for at the co-op, they are posted. For a six or seven foot tusk, $240 per foot. This guy has six tusks, of various lengths; I figure he is soaking about nine thousand dollars in the stream. He won't be able to hunt narwhal all year, this may be his one big haul for the year for all I know, but still, in a place where there very few actual jobs as we know them down south, hunting narwhal is a pretty good thing to get good at.
It does make me wonder who is buying these things. Once they are tagged, marked up, and shipped somewhere they must cost the final buyer several thousand dollars each. Who is willing to spend that kind of money to put a weird animal tooth up on their wall?
There is a theory that narwhal tusks passing from hand to hand over a trade route from the north to Europe may have given rise to the myth of the unicorn. Maybe some of that magical value still attaches to them. Or maybe they make good pool cues. I don't know, it still seems like a lot of money. But I guess as long as someone out there disagrees, it's good news for this guy.
Bad news for narwhal, though.
Also - note to self - drink from upstream of this point only.