Whales in a Warming Arctic
Photographed and written during my tenure as Oceanographic Magazine’s Storyteller in Residence (2024-2025)
Hanging off the side of the rib, my eyes are pointed not at the camera in my hand, but a hundred meters in front, where the surface of the water appears to be boiling. The Arctic summer is here in full force and around us, the fjord hums with life. It’s an unusually warm morning for East Greenland and, dry-suited and booted on the boat, we’re sweating with a sheen that mirrors that of the melting icebergs. At odds with the cacophony of creaking ice and a sky peppered with guillemots and fulmars, the ocean is eerily still. Or at least it was until the bubbles appeared. The bubbles rise faster, one after the other, until the surface is punctuated by a perfect spiral. Then, with a roar of a blow, a humpback whale rips through the surface tension, letting out a breath of fine mist, which dissipates into the air as quickly as the footprint of the bubbles risen from below. The moment is a collision of choreography and power, and demonstrates a behaviour that is now taking place in areas of the Arctic not seen before - the unmistakable sign of humpback whales bubble-net feeding.
