IMAGE: GETTY
THE POWER OF WATER
Freedive with orcas in Norway
In Arctic Norway, swimming with wild orcas is a cold, often unnerving experience — yet, for some, it offers surprising wellness benefits. Words: Jessica Vincent
There’s no time to hesitate when my captain shouts the word ‘go!’ I’m not ready, but I slide off the dinghy anyway, hitting the 4C water with more of a splash than I’d planned. The ford swallows me whole, flooding my mask and gloves with water so cold it burns. The bitter shock sends an electric jolt down
my spine, awakening every nerve in my body. My instincts scream to climb back out, yet I can’t look away — Norway’s Arctic looks beautiful from the water. Fog rises several buildings high to meet snow-capped mountains, their peaks tinged with lilac light, and seagulls wheel above a fishing boat near the shore, herring dangling from their beaks. Then I see them — enormous black fins cutting
a path through the water toward me. I freeze for a heartbeat, then draw in a cold breath and plunge into the depths of the Altaford. Face down, I stare into the deepest, blackest water I’ve ever seen. Panic rises as the current tugs at me and my thick drysuit slows every stroke, but I force myself to focus on my breathing, slowly inhaling through my snorkel while keeping my arms and legs loose. All around me, tiny particles of plankton scatter like stars and, for a moment, it feels like I’m floating through space. That’s when a shape emerges from the abyss
— black, submarine-like, with flecks of white flashing like reflectors on a bike. An orca. A high- pitched clicking sound pulses through the water, reverberating through my ears, then my chest. The apex predator swims towards me letting out a whistling sound, like air escaping a balloon, and as she passes she rolls slowly, revealing her white belly and fixing me with her left eye — the side scientists believe to be linked to curiosity. She’s so close now I can see her oval eye patch, the faint mottling on her skin and a scar on her pectoral fin. In that
moment, I feel the panic drain away, the cold slightly subside. For the first time since leaving the boat, I’m calm. She looks right at me for what feels like forever, before disappearing into the depths, leaving just a faint silhouette.
Learning the lingo Every winter, thousands of orcas travel to northern Norway to feed on herring migrating from summer feeding grounds further south. It’s one of the world’s most significant seasonal gatherings of killer whales — and yet, finding them is never guaranteed. “I want to manage your expectations”, were dinghy captain Sebastian’s first words to us when we boarded Orca Norway’s expedition boat, our base for the next three days. “What you see on social media is the highlights, but the reality of finding orcas is unpredictable and requires patience.” Earlier that morning, we’d left the port of Alta
— an Arctic town six hours north of Tromsø — aboard Sula, a sturdy 1960s Norwegian maintenance ship that once plied the coast repairing lighthouses. We’d boarded the boat the night before under the green and purple glow of the Northern Lights, and overnight temperatures had dropped to -20C, coating the deck — and the inside of my cabin window — in ice. By the time we reach the Altaford, dense fog has
settled over the water, making it almost impossible for the crew to spot orcas. For hours, we motor slowly through white nothingness, hoping to reach an area where the visibility and our chances might improve. Eventually, in the far north of the ford, the fog begins to thin and, after hours of waiting, the crew spot two large pods of killer whales. Hands shaking with adrenaline and the cold, I pull on my drysuit and scramble down into the
dinghy, slick with snow and ice as it bangs against the hull. I sit on the rubber edge gripping the icy rope and try not to slip in too early. All around us, dorsal fins surface and disappear.
They’re close enough to quicken my pulse, but Pierre, our underwater guide, doesn’t move.“They give fake windows sometimes,” he says, readjusting the clip on his weight belt. “If you enter at the wrong moment, you miss everything.” Pierre is wearing a custom freediving wetsuit, his face almost entirely covered by a neoprene hood, save for a few wisps of white beard. Even out of the water, he looks more fish than human. Known as the ‘Orca Whisperer’, Pierre Robert
de Latour has spent the past 27 years diving with orcas in Norway, clocking up more than 9,000 cetacean encounters — not just with killer whales but also humpbacks and dolphins. Right now, he’s standing at the back of the dinghy, scanning the surface. Even when the orcas approach the boat, Pierre doesn’t rush us in. He watches them instead: the direction they’re travelling, which individuals are surfacing and whether there are calves in the group. Every few seconds, his eyes flick between the water and the horizon, reading patterns I don’t yet understand. Years of observing behaviour like this have led
Pierre to develop his own technique for swimming with orcas — one that minimises disturbance for the animals. He teaches guests to keep their distance, to swim parallel with the pod (never in front or behind) with minimal movements, and to always let the animals dictate the encounter. “Orcas have their own code. You just have to
learn to read it,” says Pierre during one of our evening seminars aboard the ship, where we learn about their behaviour. “It’s not about chasing them.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC TRAVELLER – SPA & WELLNESS COLLECTION 17
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132
