Skjervøy (orcas)

Skjervøy is a small fishing town in Troms, northern Norway, at the mouth of the Kvænangen fjord system roughly 100 km northeast of Tromsø. From the winter of 2017–18 the Norwegian spring-spawning herring stock — one of the largest fish stocks in the world — began overwintering here, and the whales followed: orca pods that can merge into aggregations of well over a hundred animals, together with humpback whales and occasional fin and sperm whales, feed on the shoals from late October or November through January. This is fundamentally a surface and snorkel destination, not a scuba one: in-water encounters are conducted as guided drysuit snorkeling from RIBs and larger vessels at moving herring shoals, many encounters end up surface-only, and Norway's whale-watching guidelines are voluntary, with the Visit Tromsø code explicitly discouraging in-water activity. The season runs through the polar night — after November daylight shrinks to two to three hours of twilight — with sea temperatures around 3–6°C. Critically, the aggregation has moved before and may move again: herring wintered in Tysfjord–Vestfjord from the late 1980s to 2002, shifted offshore through the 2000s, returned to fjords near Tromsø (Kaldfjord/Kvaløya) in the mid-2010s, then jumped to Kvænangen in 2017–18; in recent seasons (including 2025–26) activity has been split between the Kaldfjord–Tromsø area and Skjervøy. Actual scuba diving in the region — kelp, anemone-covered walls, and a ferry wreck — is drysuit day diving run out of Tromsø, separate from the whale encounters.

• Norwegian spring-spawning herring have overwintered in the fjord areas at Kvænangen, around 100 km northeast of Tromsø, since the winter of 2017–18 — the year after they abandoned Kvaløya just west of Tromsø. Norway's Institute of Marine Research stresses that 'herring is whimsical': the wintering grounds have relocated repeatedly (Vestfjord in the mid-1990s–mid-2000s, then offshore), so the whale aggregation can move again.
• A 32-year photo-identification study (1988–2019) of Norway's herring-feeding killer whales comprised 3,284 captures of 1,236 individual whales, with estimated abundance peaking at 1,061 animals in 2015; the study concluded the whales adjust their distribution to shifts in their key prey, the Norwegian spring-spawning herring.
• In-water encounters are drysuit snorkeling from RIBs and larger vessels — not scuba — and many drops end up surface-only. Peer-reviewed fieldwork published in 2025 documented up to 30 RIBs and vessels visible at once around feeding events on busy days at Skjervøy, tour prices of €150–300+, and a season window that narrows to 2–3 hours of twilight after November as the polar night deepens.