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Behind The Lens: Entangled Orca — A Fight for Survival – Photos and text by Amos Nachoum, Big Animals Global Expeditions
The fjord lay still under the early winter sky, its waters reflecting the muted light of a sun too low to offer warmth. I slipped into the icy deep, the weight of my drysuit pressing me into silence. Ahead, a pod of orcas glided through the water – eight of them in tight for-
gled tightly around its tail, its rough fibers cutting deep. The net trailed like a dead weight, a man - made anchor tethering it to struggle. The orca’s strength was unmistakable, but even in its slow, deliberate strokes, I could sense the toll the net had taken. I sank to about 20 feet, leveling myself with the orca. As I raised my camera, my hands shook - not from the cold, but from the gravity of the moment. I framed the shot, capturing the stark contrast between the sleek, vital body and the crude, tangled net that dragged behind it. The image was one of strength and suffering, of survival against the odds. Sadly, all I could do was capture the moment with my camera - I had no tools to cut the net free.
mation, their sleek, black - and - white bodies cutting through the depths like living shadows. I only took a second to realize something was wrong. There was no curiosity, no playful in- teraction as I had experienced countless times before. Instead, they kept their distance, moving with a deliberate, almost solemn rhythm.
That evening, back on the mothership, Pierre, Olav, and I reviewed the images. To us, the net was a symbol of human care- lessness, its presence in the fjord a violation of the natural world’s harmony. “We have to try to help,” Pierre said, and we agreed to spend the next day trying to free the orca from its entangle- ment. The next morning, we searched
For 45 minutes, I swam after them, each kick of my fins slower than the last as the cold crept deeper into my body. My breath, loud in the quiet of the water, seemed to amplify the barrier be- tween us. The orcas never came closer, their formation unbroken, their movements purposeful. Fi- nally, exhausted and shivering, I surfaced and climbed back into the skiff.
for hours, finally found the pod, the injured orca was still there, moving more slowly than the day before. Pierre and I slipped into the water, this time without cameras, but with knives in hand. We dove repeatedly, pushing ourselves into the freezing depths to reach the animal. Each time, it stayed just beyond our grasp, swimming deeper into the fjord. The net, at least 30 feet long, was wrapped tight around its tail, impossible to remove. As the hours passed, the orca weakened, and our at- tempts to free it proved futile. We surfaced, exhausted and heartbroken. A Call to Responsibility: The image I captured that day has stayed with me, not as a triumph, but as a reminder of the silent costs of human activity. That net didn’t belong in the fjord, yet there it was, dragging down one of the ocean’s
Back on board, I reviewed the images I had captured. Pierre Robert de Latour, our dive master and a renowned expert on orca behavior, studied them with me. At first, nothing seemed unusual - just fleeting glimpses of the pod moving as one. But then, on one frame, I noticed a faint line trailing from the orca at the center. The others appeared to surround it, as if guarding an injured companion. It was blurry and indistinct, but I had never seen anything like it. “We need to follow them,” I said, and Olav, our skipper, turned the skiff back to- ward the pod. The chase lasted over an hour, the icy wind biting through my wet drysuit and chilling me to the bone. When we found the pod again, I slipped into the water, the cold shocking me into focus. Twice, I spotted the group in the dim blue light, but each time they evaded me, disappearing into the shadows. On the third dive, with daylight fading fast, I caught sight of a lone orca moving slowly, separated from the rest. Its movements were labored, its tail dragging slightly behind. I adjusted my camera settings for the low light and swam closer, wary not to startle it. Then, I saw it clearly: a fishing net tan-
most intelligent and graceful creatures. This isn’t just the story of a single orca in distress - it's a reflection of the imbalance we’ve introduced into the natural world, a symptom of a larger problem that demands our attention and action.
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