The Murky Ethics of Swimming With Killer Whales

In the turquoise waters off La Ventana, a sleepy coastal city on Mexico’s Baja peninsula, Claudio Rios, 41, monitored the radio of a fishing boat. It was late March. His eyes scanned the horizon, one hand unfastened on the wheel because the Sea of Cortez swayed beneath him.

“It smells like orcas,” he mentioned: pungent and oily.

He waited for a dorsal fin to slice via the waves. For captains to chatter over the radio. For boat engines to hum collectively. So far, nothing.

Tourists sat in boats close by, eyes large, hoping to identify certainly one of a number of male orcas named for Aztec gods and emperors: Moctezuma, Cuitláhuac, Tlaloc. Some people already had their moist fits on, fins at their ft — ready to drop into the open water with the ocean’s apex predator.

Swimming with killer whales is without doubt one of the rarest wildlife encounters on earth, achieved in solely two locations: La Ventana, Mexico, and Skjervoy, Norway. In each, guests don moist fits, snorkels and masks to look at the 20-foot-long animals shifting via open water.

Growing crowds, fueled by social media and a era that first encountered orcas in captivity or onscreen, are descending on two in any other case quiet coastal cities, bringing cash and friction in equal measure. Researchers nonetheless can’t say what sustained human contact does to wild orcas. In neither nation has that slowed the business.

“Everyone will tell you there’s never been an orca attack on humans in the wild,” mentioned Jorge Cervera Hauser, a Mexican underwater photographer who has led excursions in Mexico and Norway. “But they’re highly intelligent animals. With constant pressure, an accident is bound to happen sooner or later.”

Shortly earlier than midday, Mr. Rios’s radio crackled. The killer whales have been south, near Bahía de los Muertos. Mr. Rios grabbed the wheel, throttling the Suzuki engine to life. The boat tore via the water.