Happy memories of Killer Whales

I happened to be flicking through the TV channels the other night and found that BBC2 was showing a documentary called "High Seas" as part of their Springwatch season. This programme spent an hour documenting the work of wildlife film-maker Gordon Buchanan as he set out from the Shetland Islands on a commercial fishing trawler on a quest to get some footage of Killer Whales (Orcinus Orca) hunting in the North Sea.

After some initial mixed success I'm pleased to say that on the final day of the trip he ended up finding and filming several pods of orcas numbering 50-100 individuals in total - although it may be more accurate to say that the orcas found the fishing trawler and its associated ready supply of mackeral.

What struck me most was not the footage of the whales, although this was great and you'll hear no criticisms from me, but rather the sheer unrestrained excitement, joy and wonderment of the cameraman as the cetaceans homed in on and then surrounded the trawler.

That's the thing with Killer Whales; they can have a strange effect on your emotional balance, a feeling I'm lucky enough to have experienced myself.

Killer Whale, Orcinus Orca, Tysfjord, Norway

This photograph was taken in Tysfjord, Arctic Norway, which is a few hundred miles further north than where Gordon Buchanan did his filming. Being in a fjord rather than the North Sea makes it a bit easier to track down the whales but it can still be a challenge. After a week of grey skies, wind and rain the morning of my final day was calmer and as dawn broke so did the clouds. We were out in a small Zodiac craft before the larger whalewatching boats had left port and we headed towards a commercial trawler that was fishing for herring in the fjord. Sure enough there was a pod of orcas helping themselves to the fish that escaped the nets. As we moved further down the fjord another pod chose to swim alongside us and we spent around an hour, off and on, in their company. A pair of juvenile females were particularly curious and would swim around, under and up to the boat, seemingly partaking of the popular cetacean pastime of human-watching. The photograph above shows one of this pair, nicknamed 'Anna', and she really was as close as this looks; pat-on-the-nose close in fact.

Eventually the pod headed off in search of more herring and we headed back to port. But those few hours will remain one of my most treasured memories, and every time I see wild Orcas on screen I get a small flashback to those feelings of excitement, joy and awe once more.

Tweet