July 2, 2024
Norway
November 2023
Having found myself in more than a few trying situations when capturing images, this would be a far cry from the strenuous hikes in the shin-high mud up the Virunga Mountains or the long days out on the water in Dominica when the animals weren’t cooperating. This is a ruthless combination of brief interactions with the animals, harsh weather, and conditions that are far from conducive to coming away with a surplus of shots.
Each morning on the boat was an exercise in convincing your body to step outside. With air temperatures dropping to around 20°F, the last thing you’re looking to do is leave the warm cabin to step out onto the deck in board shorts and sandals. To add insult to injury, the skin-tight free dive suit doesn’t lend itself to a quick wardrobe change. You spend a good few minutes lubricating the inside of your suit and your body with a mixture of soap and warm water before you start a process equivalent to putting toothpaste back in the tube. I would jokingly refer to those helping me pull my head through the tiny opening as the Arctic midwives.
This all begs the question—why travel to Norway in November to get into the water?
Enter the main characters of this story.
If you’ve seen any footage of orca whales hunting in the wild, you can understand why they’ve earned their moniker. Between steamrolling great whites, coordinated flipping of seals off ice floes, launching dolphins into the sky with their tails, or “playing” with sea turtles before their meal, orcas don’t discriminate between their victims. They kill for food but also for sport. Herring congregate within the fjords during the winter months, drawing in these apex predators as well as some other substantial supporting cast members.
Light is a rare commodity above the Arctic Circle in November. In an art form dependent on it, a shortage of light makes your task significantly more difficult. While the brief block of constant golden hour gives you the ideal conditions for images from the boat, it doesn’t help when you dive into the dark blue water. You find yourself at a great disadvantage. Photography underwater in low light turns the standard juggling act of getting a properly exposed image from one with beanbags to one with bowling balls. In many situations I would say that gear isn’t paramount for photography, but this is one where you are truly pushing your camera to its limit.
When you travel such a long way to such a remote location with a very specific subject in mind, it’s difficult not to feel frustrated when things aren’t going your way. Those initial two days were spent in the waters off Skjervøy. There were plenty of whales, but also a significant number of boats, leaving us with mostly fleeting encounters with the orcas. This paired with my struggle to lock focus on the passing animals made for far too many “abstract” images that I knew wouldn’t cut it.
After some discussions with the guide and crew, a higher risk, higher reward option was presented—head further north where there would be fewer boats, but a lower likelihood of finding the predators. For me, the choice was clear. Any opportunity to get into a quieter area away from other boat activity would make for better encounters, and as a result, better images.
The decision was made to continue farther north. Aside from the odd fishing vessel, we were alone in the fjords. We were greeted with much heavier chop as we traveled through waters that weren’t shielded by the adjacent islands like we had been before. The third morning under a lovely bout of seasickness, I was asking myself if it was a mistake to make the travel to Norway in the first place. Shortly after, the crew spotted dorsal fins, and I dragged myself onto the deck to suit up once more. Groundhog Day. Little did I know in just a few hours I’d be in the midst of the chaos that would land me the images I sought from this trip.
From the main ship, our Zodiac boat (think glorified dinghy) would be lowered into the water. Once on board the smaller boat, the combination of long free dive fins, snorkel gear, and camera gear makes for a tight squeeze. Sitting on the edge of the Zodiac, your long fins constrain the angle of your feet. You do your best to wiggle your toes to keep sensation, but this position, combined with the cold water splashing in from the wake and the wind whipping against your face, make for conditions that become increasingly harder to bear over the course of a few hours.
We detached from the ship and set off into the fjord, following the orcas but making sure to keep our distance. Experienced guides have a good read on the animals and can spot when they are behaving in a way that indicates they might be more accepting of interactions. We ended up waiting in the zodiac for about an hour and a half, hoping for some action. We watched them spy hopping, a behavior where the whales propel vertically to hold their heads above the water to see what’s around them. They took some time to sleep at the surface. We also spotted those larger supporting characters off in the distance—their massive blows visible from miles away as they entered the fjords like steamships.
After hours of patience, the action we came all this way for began to unfold near the surface. We jumped off the zodiac into the water and my snorkel immediately snapped from my mask. Conveniently timed for the one moment I’d need it most. I was able to jury-rig it and tuck it under the rubber strap, as I finned over to the main event.
Orcas off Norway engage in carousel feeding, a hunting technique in which a pod (or multiple pods) will work cooperatively to corral a large group of herring. They first split a smaller group off from the larger school of fish. A few of the whales will swim down into the fjord to get beneath the herring before forcing them upwards to trap this bait ball against the surface. The orcas swim in circles around the bait ball to tighten the shape, blowing bubbles, flashing their white underbellies, and slapping their tails on the surface to scare the herring into their defensive position. They smash their tails forcefully into the bait ball, leaving some fish stunned and others dead on impact. The feeding then begins. The whales take a few herring, or sometimes even just one, into their mouths before eating the fattiest portions and discarding the head and bones – a delicate act for such massive and brutal predators.
The event appears chaotic to us, yet it’s a masterfully coordinated effort on the part of the whales. The communication is audible throughout, with the orcas making their high-pitched whistles sounds as they surround and hunt the fish. You’ll see stunned herring or some of the half-eaten fish living their last moments. You are completely enveloped by the shimmering fish scales of the recently departed with only the dark water beneath you. It all creates a scene I could only liken to floating amongst the stars.
It’s almost impossible to know where to look or where to point your camera as all of this is taking place. I distinctly remember spotting a bull orca in front of me as he circled through the fish bits to keep the bait ball intact. He ended up passing below me, and I was left watching the ball of herring, moving together in a slow but uniform manner, almost in a trance-like state. A few seconds passed before I saw a massive shape emerge from below. One of the “steamships” from earlier had arrived on the scene.
I began to pan with my camera to focus on this massive animal coming towards the surface. Between my attention on the one subject off in the distance and my goggles limiting my peripheral vision, I didn’t notice the second giant heading directly towards me. It wasn’t until I spotted a flash of gray below me that I looked down to see the top of a fin whale. Some seventy tons cruising less than a body-length below my fins—the second largest animal on the planet. I somehow managed to keep my camera on the animal, probably resigned to the fact that if the whale was going to make contact with me, I would have little say in the matter. The force of the fin whale’s movement in the water pushed me up above the surface, where I was reminded of how surreal this whole scene was. The dorsal fins of orcas and fin whales passing in every direction in the middle of snow-covered mountains.
As if I wasn’t presented with enough of an encounter, it turned out the behemoths were initially just scoping out the adjacent bait ball. They disappeared for a brief period and I again found myself watching the herring move in tandem. This changed suddenly as the fish sensed something before I did. The organized ball darted off into every direction. Two mouths emerged from below—the fin whales had returned for their piece of the pie.
For all the frustration I felt earlier, all of the hours of discomfort out on the zodiac waiting for the right moment, I ended up fortunate to be in the midst of moments I couldn’t have drawn up if I tried. Once we returned to the ship and the adrenaline finally died down, after a few additional days out on the water, and after finally returning home, I was able to reflect on that initial question of why the orcas hadn’t been at the top of my list.
I realized it had nothing to do with the testing weather or the challenging shooting conditions. Frankly, I was ignorant of all of this until I experienced it first hand. After trying to piece together my rationale, I came to the conclusion that the primary reason was that I associated orcas with captivity.
Ten years on from the “Blackfish” documentary, images of these whales in those tiny tanks still resonated with me. There was also an element of personal guilt for having attended shows at these “parks” as a kid. How “wild” could an animal be that I had only seen in man-made structures? And if I made that link between these whales and confinement, others very well could see them in a similar manner.
It didn’t take me long to realize the flaw in my logic. These are animals that have been traversing the oceans for six million of years—far longer than we have been around. The very reason I felt hesitant became the motivation to photograph the species—to dispel my own notions, and hopefully those that others may hold.
Today, there are still over 50 orcas in captivity across seven countries, over a third of which were taken from the wild. I’m certainly not the first to photograph these animals, but I wanted to try and do my small part to continue to normalize a sight that, regrettably, may have been clouded because of human actions.
-EK
7/9/24
