Maser Films

Echoes in the Arctic
Director + Cinematographer — SeaLegacy

The world's healthiest orca population lives in the fjords of the Norwegian Arctic, feeding on one of the largest herring schools on earth. When the Norwegian government began considering opening that ecosystem to oil exploration, Paul Nicklen and Cristina Mittermeier of SeaLegacy set out to document what was at stake. I joined them as co-director and cinematographer.

We spent two weeks living at sea in the Lofoten Islands — long, punishing hours on a small boat searching for whales, multiple dives a day by the team in frigid water while I filmed and directed from the surface. The conditions were brutal and the light was spectacular. Below the surface, orca and humpback whales fed in coordinated sweeps through massive herring schools, one of the most extraordinary wildlife behaviors on earth.

The film documents the food web of the fjords — herring, orca, humpback — and the threat that oil extraction poses to an ecosystem that has remained intact precisely because it has been left alone.

Echoes in the Arctic premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2020.