Baffinland Iron Mines Corporation's open-pit mine—located 160 kilometres south-southwest of Pond Inlet—Mary River Mine—has attracted international attention for its planned phase two expansion, that would see a dramatic increase in shipping from its Milne Inlet port in Eclipse Sound, near Pond Inlet, through a narwhal habitat in the waters near Greenland. Milne Inlet is a "small inlet" that "opens into Eclipse Sound, a primary summering area for Nunavut's largest population of narwhal". Ships from Baffinland's port in Milne Inlet will have to enter and exit Tallurutiup Imanga National Marine Conservation Area—a national marine conservation area. In a 2021 letter to the Nunavut Impact Review Board, the mayor of Pond Inlet, Joshua Arreak, said that the hamlet would not not support the phase two project unless Baffinland agreed to slow down their increase in production to yearly increments of 1.5 million tonners per year." In Baffinland's 2019 annual report, Pond Inlet reported that in 2018 there were 49 people employed by Baffinland in Pond Inlet and the number was decreasing. Baffinland had built a tote road to carry truckloads of iron ore from Mary River Mine to Milne Inlet instead of the special cold-weather railway and a new port Steensby Inlet planned in 2011 and proposed in 2008. With a global decrease in the price of iron ore, Baffinland said that the railway and Steensby Inlet port was too expensive an option at that time. Phase 2 would include the railway.