Emergency declared in Greenland as researchers spot orcas breaching near melting ice shelves

Emergency declared in Greenland as researchers spot orcas breaching near melting ice shelves
By Sophie Turner / 12 November 2025 : 08:07




Researchers on the water have triggered emergency protocols after orcas were seen breaching within earshot of melting ice shelves, where slabs can shear off without warning. The sight is stunning. The stakes are painfully real.

The morning began flat and silver, the sea a sheet of steel under a pale sun. From the inflatable, a graduate researcher steadied a camera as the first dorsal fin cut the surface, then another, then a black-and-white body arced cleanly, thunder following a heartbeat later off the ice wall. A crackle on the VHF uttered the word no one wanted to hear: “Emergency.” The call wasn’t panic; it was a pivot. It was the sound of people who know what unchecked energy can do. The water sounded older than us. The map had gone out of date.

Orcas at the edge of the shelf

Picture the scene that forced that radio call: a pod of orcas surfing swell lines, rolling toward a calving front whose face is riddled with melt channels and silt-stained fractures. The whales aren’t the threat; the energy they bring is. Waves slap the undercut lip, echoing deep thuds like a drum wound too tight. **This is not normal for early spring.**

Field notes from the team read like a thriller in pencil: narwhal clicks rising, ice popping, an orca tail-slap and then a spray of brash ice where the shelf shrugged a few tonnes into the fjord. No one was hurt. No kit was lost. The story is that nothing went wrong because the call came early. Local logs say sightings have climbed sharply in the past decade as summer sea ice retreats farther and the shoulder seasons open. Numbers can be debated. The pattern is hard to miss. ....................(more)

https://www.hisgardenmaintenance.co.uk/12-11-2025/168342-spot-orcas-breaching-near/