On our eighth day of camping, we had spent the day exploring a glacier cut fjord in the Broughton Archipelago and on our evening boat cruise back to camp we spotted some blows in the distance a ways up the inlet.

We shut down the engines and sat in awed silence. Time slowed down and as the light drew in I felt our other senses were heightened. With no other humans around for many miles, it felt as though we could have been part of the pod ourselves. The killer whales’ exhales echoed off the nearby cliffs as they moved slowly in our direction, the hum of their underwater vocalisation at times reaching us through the hull of the boat.  That evening I fell asleep thinking about sound and how well sound travels, especially underwater.

If humans would actually slow down in our busy lives and sit and listen, one might realise how much human-made sound there is — and perhaps also consider how this affects the wild animals that we share out planet with.   Killer whales live in an acoustic world. The visibility in the water is often so low that a whale may not even be able to see its own tail. Instead they use sound, as water is such an ideal medium for transmitting sound waves. Echolocation is used for navigation; for locating prey; and even for identifying objects or to differentiate between fish species. They have very complex languages with different dialects which they use to distinguish between different pods. Underwater noise pollution from shipping and tankers is getting worse every year, making it hard for a number of cetaceans to find each other, creating myriad other issues that can cause a decrease in their population. This issue needs more awareness so we are able to improve with quieter propellers (which furthermore would cause less carbon emissions) and better regulations.

Prize Sizes: Sizing Guide Page

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Photographer: Mark Williams

Printed on: Giclée Hahnemühle Photo Rag