Swimming with Orcas

A plunge into forbidding waters off Norway leads to an extraordinary encounter

-  Pete McBride 

The water is cold inside Norway's northernmost fjords. When I slipped in headfirst, wearing a thick wetsuit, the four-degree-Celsius surface temperature made the water feel dense and biting on my exposed face. Diving down, I crossed a threshold into another world-dark, frigid, seemingly bottomless and home to giant carnivores that eat fish, seals and porpoises.

If you want to see wild orcas, they can be found in every ocean, from the Arctic to Antarctic. The coast of Canada's British Columbia, Argentina's Valdes Peninsula, and Australia's Bremer Bay are all popular orca-watching spots.

Despite their 'killer whale' nickname, orcas don't prey on humans. But they are the largest dolphins on the planet, with seven main ecotypes that vary in pigmentation pattern, diet and sonar dialect. Members of these groups don't usually mate with one another, though scientists are divided on whether to consider them different species.

Most countries set limits on how close you can get to orcas. That's not the case in Norway, which has no laws against swimming with dolphins and whales. (The country's whaling laws are also notoriously lax.)

This makes Norway an alluring destination for orca lovers, but it can also lead to danger for both humans and animals. At one point during my visit, I saw three young tourists from Spain block a pod of orcas with their sailboat, jump into the water and try to approach by paddleboard. Their tactics scared the orcas into hiding far below the surface. What's more, the Spanish tourists could have ended up stranded out there beyond the fjords, five kilometers from the nearest shoreline, left to the mercy of the fierce Arctic weather and currents.