A Baby is Born

We had just dropped our divers into the water. There were so many orca circling and cavorting.
We all thought, “There must be herring below,” and were ready for the orca to feed.

Suddenly, there was a great spray of crimson-red water from the middle of the orca action, a sight terrifying in what it might mean, with four of our guys in the water among them.

With that event, and hoping the worst hadn’t happened, the orca all went into a frenzy of agitated behaviour, leaping over one another in a chaotic dance. Still, the two of us tending our boats on the surface had no idea what was happening below.

Then there it was, a newborn orca, pushed up to the surface by its midwife team for its first breath.

Later, with the help of the Norwegian Orca Survey team, we started piecing the story together. The crimson-red sea had been the placenta, ripped to shreds at birth, and the frenzy began as the mother and her midwife entourage worked frantically to push the newborn to the surface.

It took quite some time before the baby truly became animated, but about twenty minutes later, the orca pod and baby left the birthing site and headed off together at a healthy few knots, a sure sign of a successful introduction of a newborn orca to the fjords of Skjervøy.


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