Orcas in Norway: The Cold Truth Behind the Viral Videos

So here is the part that does not fit in a video. Can you see orcas in Norway in winter? Often, yes, from about November to January. But only where the herring decide to spend the winter, in a place with very light rules and a lot of boats. And it all starts with a small silver fish.

Why do orcas in Norway follow the herring?

The short answer is food. Norwegian spring-spawning herring spend the winter in some fjords of northern Norway, and orcas and humpback whales follow them there. The International Whaling Commission describes the orca season in northern Norway as roughly November to January, in Skjervøy, Tromsø or elsewhere, depending on if and where the herring winter in the fjords.

That last part matters, because the place is not fixed. In the winter of 2025 to 2026, Norway’s Institute of Marine Research estimated around 780,000 tonnes of herring in the area, compared with around two million tonnes in 2024. Altafjorden had about 340,000 tonnes, the Kvænangen area about 290,000 and Sørøysundet about 150,000. The researchers think much of the herring stayed somewhere else, possibly offshore in the Norwegian Sea.

So when someone tells you a fjord “always has orcas”, smile and be gentle with that promise. The fish decide. The orcas follow.

The carousel: how they hunt

The way these orcas feed is one of the most studied hunting techniques in the ocean. In a fjord in northern Norway, researchers filmed orcas working together to herd herring into a tight ball close to the surface.

Then the whales circled the ball and hit it with fast underwater tail slaps. When a slap worked, the herring were stunned, right at the moment of the fastest tail speed, together with a loud noise. The orcas then ate the stunned fish one by one. The team concluded that slapping with the tail is more efficient than charging into the school with the whole body. People call this carousel feeding, and once you know it, you see the whole dance differently.

The orcas also adapt. A study that tagged 16 herring-eating orcas found that they kept the same circling strategy all year, but changed depth and sound use with the herring’s life stage. In winter they slapped at shallower depths and used less echolocation, their way of “seeing” with sound. That suggests they relied more on their eyes.

What Norwegian law says, and what it does not

Norway’s whale safari regulation is short. It defines whale safari as any activity that aims to observe whales in their natural home, including swimming, diving and paddling. It forbids doing it in a way that disturbs whales.

Its two distance rules surprise many people. They are measured from fishing vessels, moorings and fixed gear, not from the whales: 0.2 nautical miles (370 m) for whale safari boats, and 0.4 nautical miles (740 m) for swimming, diving and paddling. They exist so that whale watching and fishing can share the same water.

The more detailed advice comes from NorWhale, a network of whale watching operators. Their national guidelines are voluntary, not law. They advise boats to stay more than 500 m from whales where possible, to keep a maximum of three boats on each situation at the same time, and to end an encounter after 30 minutes at most. They discourage freediving, diving and swimming, and do not recommend snorkelling with other whale species or at other times of year.

A peer-reviewed study from Skjervøy describes the setting as low-regulation, with voluntary national guidelines and “light-touch regulation”. It notes that the law gives no scientific definition of disturbance, and that “there is no cap on the quantity of boats”.

The crowding the camera does not show

The researcher behind that study spent four months in Skjervøy across two winter seasons, between October 2023 and December 2024. On the busiest days, she counted 30 RIBs and larger boats in her field of vision.

Many visitors she met were strongly against orcas in captivity. Some described seeing wild orcas as “an apology for going to dolphinariums as a child”. Yet many also felt uneasy about the traffic around the most popular whales, and about their own part in it.

This is the heart of it. One careful boat cannot control how many other boats arrive. Each skipper may feel they are doing well, and the total can still be a lot for a family of whales that is trying to eat.

The cold part of the truth

These are Arctic fjords in winter. The days are short, the air is often below freezing, and the hours on a small open boat are long. The RNLI, the lifeboat charity, explains that in water below 15 °C your body can go into cold water shock, and you can lose control of your breathing and movement. The first effects pass in less than a minute. Winter fjord water in the far north is much colder than that line.

Orcas as a species are listed as Data Deficient on the IUCN Red List. That means there is not enough information to judge their status as a whole. It does not mean they are safe. The herring-eating orcas of Norway are one part of that picture, with their own calls and their own hunting skills. Our orca Atlas page tells more of their story.

How to meet them gently

Ocean Calling does not run orca trips in Norway, and we do not arrange time in the water with orcas anywhere. If you travel north in winter, I think the gentlest way to meet these whales is from the boat or from the shore. Watching a family work a herring ball from a respectful distance, hearing a blow in the cold air, is already so much.

If you join a boat, ask whether the skipper follows the NorWhale guidelines point by point, not only the law: keeping distance, no more than three boats per group of whales, and no more than 30 minutes with them. Ask what they do when too many boats arrive. The best answer is short: we leave. A good skipper slows down early, never cuts across the orcas’ path and never drives into a feeding group.

On those long cold boat days, I keep spare gloves and my phone in a roll-top dry bag, so I am not tempted to lean over the side with wet hands for a photo.

Then there is the plate. Norway still hunts minke whales, and whale meat can appear on menus. If you go to watch whales, it makes sense not to eat them. We explain more in Whale Meat on the Menu.

And if what you really want is calm, lawful time near wild animals, our Ocean Match can help you find a place where that is part of the plan.

If this made you curious about meeting the ocean this way, you can explore our upcoming retreats.

Questions people ask

Wildlife encounters are never guaranteed and never forced. Ocean Calling works only with vetted, ethical local operators, and every animal is free to approach, or not, entirely on its own terms.