Guest Post by Paul Nicklen | Unicorns of the Sea – Rare Moments With Some of the Ocean’s Most Reclusive Mammals
September 21, 2023
This is a guest blog post by WWSG exclusive thought leader, Paul Nicklen. All images are copyrighted. To purchase Paul’s work, visit his website.
In the 1700s, Carl Linnaeus, the father of taxonomy, gave them the name Monodon monoceros, meaning “one-toothed one horn.” However, narwhals have long been part of the knowledge of arctic cultures like the Inuit, serving as the inspiration for myths and stories told around the fire.
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” – John F. Kennedy
I spent a good five years returning over and over again to Nunavut’s ice edge in search of intimate moments to photograph for National Geographic. From the window of my ultralight plane, I would comb the frozen surface for the faintest hint of movement within an endless smattering of potential breathing holes in the rotting spring sea ice. Five years and all I had were fleeting glimpses, dashed hopes, and a gnawing frustration with my own limitations as one particular subject continued to elude me. Finally, with the help of my good friend and fellow pilot Brian Knutsen, the perseverance paid off.
Narwhals are incredibly shy and cryptic animals, made all the more difficult to photograph due to their rarity and remoteness. In the winter, they split off into smaller pods where females travel together with their calves and males form their own groups. During this time, they are all but impossible to spot and tend to vanish in a flurry, even if you are lucky enough to find them.
The only way to achieve the kind of images I had my heart set on was to catch them from the air or to land my Ultralite plane on a drifting pan of sea ice – a tricky feat as the ice moves fast and getting stranded only takes one little miscalculation. Each year, the pods off the coasts of Greenland head south to summer in Lancaster Sound and gorge on the abundance of polar cod, providing a short window of opportunity to photograph them.
After months of camping on the constantly shifting sea ice with a small team and my two pals Brian and Jed, another photographer, we took to the skies yet again with stubbornly high hopes. We set out far from the shores of Baffin Island, where the ice edge began to give way to open ocean – and there between the drifting pack ice was a sea churning with narwhals. I snapped as many aerial shots as I could as we descended to the ice below. We finally landed and then traveled to the massive congregation, where we stood feet away from thousands of narwhals in the middle of a feeding foray. They took long, gulping breaths in between diving and hunting the schools of cod below, shoving their eight-foot ivory tusks high above the surface.
It took five years to get two good days of shooting, but, finally, my wildest dreams had come into crystal clear focus. Unfortunately, the moment was short-lived. While I was caught up in the commotion and stunning beauty around me, I let my guard down and took a misstep. Before I knew it, I was plunged straight into the freezing waters, knocking the air from my lungs and slamming my shoulder into the unforgiving ice. My team members were quick to help me back onto the ice, and as Jed tried his best to reset my now dislocated shoulder, we knew the shoot was over. Still, as I sat there wincing in pain, nothing could diminish the swell of victory in my chest as we sat surrounded by narwhal tusks and nature’s perfect canvas.
“Ivory Brigade” Canadian Arctic, 2016
Reading about legendary animals in textbooks is one thing, but seeing them in the wild is another entirely.
“Gathering of Unicorns” Canadian Arctic, 2016
Plankton grows on the underside of the sea ice, amphipods feed on the plankton, cod feed on the amphipods, and narwhals feed on the cod – so goes the circle of life in the Arctic.
I know that I am incredibly fortunate to do the work that I do, but it is important to recognize the difference between the dream and reality. Luck, after all, can only find you while you are already hard at work, and most of the photographs I have set out to capture have ended in absolute failure. However, over the decades, I have come to see failure not just as a prerequisite for taking great photographs but also as an indication that I am on the right track. It serves as a guide to push beyond your comfort zone and deep into uncharted waters where the best images come to life. So to my fellow photographers who might be stranded against the familiar walls of doubt and uncertainty, please hang in there. I promise you failure is never the end of the road.