Dear MARMAM community, I am a social anthropologist researching human-whale encounters, and I am writing to share the recent publication of a research article about the emotional responses of tourists who snorkel with orcas in Skjervøy, Northern Norway.
Hale, S. E. (2025). Snorkelling with orcas (killer whales) in Skjervøy, Northern Norway: Ambivalent encounters in a crowded tourism space. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486251319672 Abstract The opportunity to snorkel with orcas (killer whales) near the Norwegian Arctic town of Skjervøy is unparalleled globally, due to the absence of regulations prohibiting the activity, requiring licenses, or limiting the number of boats. Since 2017, the annual arrival of orcas and other large whale species in winter has been attracting increasing numbers of tourists, leading to crowding and sometimes risky situations at sea that are described as a ‘wild west’. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Skjervøy across two winter seasons, the article first describes how whale watching emerged in this low-regulation context, and the consequences of the growing popularity of snorkelling activities. Second, it examines tourists’ self-reported responses to their snorkelling experiences, revealing that many people see encounters with wild orcas as a form of redemption or apology for the ways that humans have mistreated the species, particularly in captivity. The embodied experience of immersion in orcas’ Arctic habitat begins a process of recontextualisation, whereby a species understood to have suffered at human hands is imagined anew according to principles of freedom and autonomy. For other tourists, their awe at the opportunity to observe orcas up close is complicated by feelings of unease about their role in a sometimes-chaotic activity that can disturb the whales, shaped by the experience of sharing the sea space with numerous other tourists and boats. In the final section, the article suggests that these ‘ambivalent encounters’ undermine their hopes for a benign form of human-whale encounter, as the crowding creates an image of humans ‘chasing’ the whales. Highlights • Skjervøy is a unique case study because of its comparative lack of snorkelling and whale-watching regulations. Norway is the only country in the world to offer unregulated snorkelling activities with orcas, which can lead to crowding. • Snorkelling tourists in Skjervøy can feel that the experience somehow atones, or compensates for, humans keeping orcas in captivity elsewhere. • Others have a more ‘ambivalent encounter’, feeling shocked by the number of boats and experiencing conflicting feelings of awe and guilt when snorkelling with whales. The article is open access but if you have any questions or comments, I would be happy to hear from you at: sadie.h...@uib.no<mailto:sadie.h...@uib.no>. Thank you and best wishes, Sadie --- Sadie Hale PhD fellow, SEATIMES<https://www.uib.no/en/seatimes> project Department of Social Anthropology University of Bergen [cid:91bc0383-a0cb-4148-98b0-9476a32e4a8e]
_______________________________________________ MARMAM mailing list MARMAM@lists.uvic.ca https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/marmam
