The seal had already lost its safest place. Moments earlier, it had been resting on a piece of Antarctic ice while killer whales moved beneath the surface nearby. The predators […]
The water around Rarotonga was warm, blue and clear enough to make the open ocean feel almost peaceful. Nan Hauser had entered it many times before. She had spent decades […]
There was no cage between Benoît Girodeau and the open ocean. No reef wall to retreat toward. Only deep blue water, a camera in his hands, and three enormous animals […]
At first, the fish appeared to be moving toward her. Cindy Yang was floating just beneath the surface in the cold water off Norway, her body stretched horizontally as she […]
At first, the fin moving toward Adam Walker looked like the last thing an exhausted swimmer wanted to see in open water. It was approaching quickly through the cold, rough […]
The calf could still swim. Its mother could not. In March 2024, inside a remote tidal lagoon on the northwest coast of Vancouver Island, an adult female orca became trapped […]
The distance between them looked painfully small. A young humpback whale calf surfaced inside a narrow strip of dark water surrounded by broken sea ice. On the other side of […]
The first thing people noticed was that the calf was still breathing. Every few moments, its dark head rose between the white foam, just high enough for the blowhole to […]
At first, it looked wrong. The mother was not keeping her calf close in the open water. She was pushing it away. From the rocky shoreline above the bay, the […]
From the cliff above the bay, the problem looked painfully simple. The calf was inside. Its mother was outside. Only a narrow opening between two dark rocky points separated them. […]