Fresh off an extraordinary trip to the Arctic, Health Stack Founder and physiotherapist James Fletcher sat down to share the story behind one of the most profound nature experiences of his life — diving under ice in Norway, face-to-face with orcas and humpback whales. As an experienced freedive instructor, Fletcher constantly seeks meaningful encounters with the natural world, but this one, he says, was “on another level.”
Q: James, you’ve just returned from Norway. How would you even begin to describe the experience?
James Fletcher: It was unbelievable – easily the best nature experience I’ve ever had. You’re in these ice fields, swimming in freezing, exposed conditions, and suddenly you’re surrounded by orca. You’re watching them feed, communicate, give birth, and interact… all right in front of you. And then, at the same time, you’ve got humpbacks cruising through, feeding on bait balls.
It’s surreal because these are huge predators, and you’re just there in their world, watching them move through the ocean.
Q: Was this trip for work, research, or purely personal adventure?
James Fletcher: It was a mix, but mostly this was me wanting to be out in nature. Nature reminds us that health is interconnected, when we respect the environment, we protect the wellbeing of our communities. It shapes how we think, how we act, and how we design health solutions that honour both people and the planet.
Q: You mentioned you captured some of this on a GoPro. What were those moments like in real time?
James Fletcher: The GoPro footage kind of puts everything into perspective. What you see on camera was literally everyday reality up there; orca passing right in front of you in these icy waters, and then suddenly a massive humpback whale appears beside you.
There was one moment where a humpback passed right underneath me. On the footage it looks close — but in person it was closer. I had to kick myself away, not the whale. It was that immediate.
Q: You also described a really intimate moment with an orca. Can you take us through that?
James Fletcher: One of the orca didn’t want anything to do with me — just kept its distance. But another one… it was curious.
It swam up to about five metres from me, exhaled this huge burst of air, then sank down about two metres beneath the surface. So I dived down to meet it. Suddenly we were just looking at each other, eye to eye, suspended in the water.
I swam a little toward it, and it started backing up slowly, still watching me. This went on for maybe 20 seconds — just this back-and-forth interaction — until it decided it had seen enough and glided away. It was such a calm, intelligent moment. You can’t come away from that unchanged.
Q: What draws you to experiences like this? Most people would never consider diving under Arctic ice with apex predators.
James Fletcher: There’s something else out there; something you can only understand when you’re in nature on its terms. Getting curious, that’s what drives me. I felt it with the orca, and it’s pushing me to look at interactions with other species, like sperm whales.
As a diver, you’re always searching for something that moves you. That experience in the Arctic did exactly that.
