Nature on Board: Birds, Whales and Northern Skies aboard Ambience

“The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, May 25, 1843

 

Following Nature North

 

By the time we boarded Ambience at Tilbury, UK, in late October 2025, the year had already carried us much farther than we could easily convey or absorb. Spring had begun with an Atlantic crossing aboard Wind Surf, followed almost immediately by walking the Via Augusta from Cádiz, the Via de la Plata north through Spain and the Camino Sanabrés toward Santiago. We then returned to Canada for the final northern season of our six-year #Hike4Birds along the Trans Canada Trail, eventually reaching Tuktoyaktuk in September after another long stretch of trekking along highways, remote roads, changing weather and days that demanded more from us than we increasingly felt we had left to give. Then, only a few weeks later, we were back beside the Atlantic, preparing to travel north again. On paper (and in our minds), the sequence of journeys, pilgrims, and hikes looked almost relentless.

 

Yet in all the ways that matter, Ambience did not feel like another task to complete or another extension of one of our hikes. We were not travelling to Norway to accumulate another line on a map or prepare ourselves for whatever came next. The attraction was simpler. The voyage offered the opportunity to journey through the North Sea and Norwegian Sea, beyond the Arctic Circle amid a season already tipping quickly toward winter. Daylight hours would decrease as we moved north, snow would begin to appear on mountains, seabirds and marine mammals would hopefully appear alongside the coastline and, if conditions allowed, the Northern Lights might appear above us.

 

There was another reason this voyage immediately interested us. Ambience was partnered with ORCA, the UK marine conservation charity, whose volunteers would be aboard conducting watches, recording whales and dolphins and speaking with passengers about the marine world surrounding the ship. As such, we would be travelling through northern seas aboard what was, in effect, a moving observation platform. We could not know what would appear, and the ocean would offer no guarantees, but for seventeen days we would have the opportunity to watch.

 

From the Thames into the North Sea

 

The journey began in a landscape where nature, history, and human industry were already inseparable. Tilbury sits along the Thames River amid docks, ships, industry and historic fortifications, yet the waterway remains a tidal habitat as surely as it was a transportation corridor. During the days before embarkation, we had walked beside the Thames and visited the London Wetland Centre and RSPB Rainham Marshes, seeing again how wetlands, cities, infrastructure and wildlife often occupy the same landscapes. Boarding Ambience therefore did not feel like leaving nature behind. We were simply moving from the edge of the river onto the water itself.

 

Our first full day at sea quickly established that watching nature from a ship could be very different from standing beside a wetland or following a forest trail. Strong winds pushed three- to four-metre swells across the North Sea, rough enough that sections of the outdoor decks were closed.  Regardless, whenever conditions allowed, we went outside to see what could be spotted. The challenge was immediately obvious. On an active sea, almost everything seemed capable of becoming something else. A breaking wave looked momentarily like a distant whale blow. A flash of white along a swell became a possible seabird before disappearing. Dark shapes appeared between wave troughs and vanished before we could decide whether they had been birds, floating debris or simply another fold in the water. Even with binoculars and cameras, the sea state and high winds made sustained observation and identification difficult.

 

The ORCA volunteers were out as well, scanning the seas despite the conditions and recording what they could. Gradually other passengers began drifting toward them, sometimes because they were genuinely interested in whales and dolphins, but often simply because people with binoculars staring intently at the horizon tend to attract attention. Questions followed. What does a whale blow look like? How can you tell a dolphin from a porpoise? Where is the best place on the ship to stand? Does a rough sea make seeing anything impossible?  As people listened and learned, they understood what to watch for and soon began looking too. The observation deck gradually became a social space built around shared attention and curiosity.

 

Scotland and Wildlife in the Harbour

 

Approaching Scotland brought an obvious change in visible birdlife. Around Cromarty Firth, Kittiwakes, Greater Black-backed Gulls and other gulls moved above the water while Great Cormorants crossed lower to the waterline. Mist lay across the surrounding hills, periodically revealing farmland, villages and ridgelines before another shower shifted everything again.

 

As Ambience manoeuvred toward Invergordon, a dark fin broke the surface nearby. We saw only several brief undulations before the animal disappeared, but Sean managed photographs that were later identified through iNaturalist as a Humpback Whale. Almost at the same time, a Harbour Seal surfaced within the bay, its rounded head appearing briefly before slipping back beneath the water. Neither encounter happened on an excursion or during an official wildlife watch. They occurred while the ship was simply arriving in port.

 

As we had seen in Tillbury, spotting birds and marine life near ports would repeat and be an important aspect of this voyage.  Working harbours were not empty spaces through which wildlife occasionally wandered. Gulls followed vessels, cormorants crossed channels and seals surfaced among boats while people went about their working lives along the shore. Occasionally something much larger appeared as well.  Fishing boats, ferries, cruise ships and industrial docks existed alongside marine ecosystems rather than outside them. Years of walking had taught us not to divide landscapes too easily into wild and human spaces, and northern ports repeatedly reinforced the same lesson. Nature did not wait beyond the harbour entrance or for those who were on a paid excursion to arrive.

 

When Citizen Science Travels Too

 

The crossing from Scotland toward Norway made ORCA's presence on board increasingly became one of the most distinctive and enjoyable parts of the journey. Volunteers maintained watches, recorded sightings and offered presentations about cetaceans and marine ecology. More importantly, they encouraged passengers to participate in the acts of observing and recording their own sightings. Once people understood the difference between a dorsal fin and a breaking wave, or learned that whale blows could sometimes be visible long before the animal's body, the decks seemed to fill with increasing numbers of curious passengers.  It became apparent how useful that could be. No single observer can watch an entire ocean around a moving ship. A dolphin might appear briefly at the bow while everyone is scanning the wake, or a whale could surface on the opposite side of the vessel and disappear before someone crossed the deck. The more people who knew what to watch for, the greater the chance that something would be noticed. 

 

That culture of participation resonated strongly with #Hike4Birds. For years we had encouraged walkers to notice what lived beside trails and to understand that meaningful observations did not require professional credentials. A bird list entered into eBird, an uncertain photograph shared through iNaturalist, or a whale fluke submitted to a research database can extend an encounter beyond personal memory. The scientific value of any one observation may be modest, but collecting thousands of such records can reveal patterns no single traveller could ever see. 

 

On Ambience, the effect was cumulative – each day more people scanned the water.  Some appeared with binoculars after attending an ORCA presentation. Others joined a cluster at the railing because someone had called out a possible sighting. Passengers began telling one another where something had appeared, and when a bird, whale or dolphin was spotted on one side of the vessel, word could move remarkably quickly across the deck.

 

The combination of engaging passengers' curiosity, educating them, and transforming the ship into a platform for nature observation made Ambience distinct and in its own way more enjoyable than many of our earlier sea voyages. The experience made observation itself part of the voyage rather than something reserved for particular destinations. We could go ashore and explore Norway when Ambience reached port, but during the days between those places the surrounding sea was not empty space. ORCA helped make that world visible.

 

North Through the Norwegian Sea

 

The journey north from Trondheim toward Tromsø carried us farther into the Norwegian Sea.  Increasingly, our days got shorter, and the quality of the light seemed to change.  We had longer sunrises, overcast skies, and rainy drizzle – amid which mountains and coastlines intermittently appeared beyond the railings.  Regardless of the conditions, we stayed outside along with other birders and the ORCA team, hopeful of spotting birds and marine life.

 

Wildlife watching is more difficult amid high winds and large waves.  With that said, several Northern Gannets appeared behind the ship, fishing in the disturbed water of the wake. Their pale bodies repeatedly emerged against the darker sea before they banked away again, while several gulls worked farther off the sides of the vessel.

 

In addition, and unexpectedly, at one point a European Starling appeared around the vessel, repeatedly making short flights away from the ship before returning again. For several days it remained somewhere around us. At times it disappeared far enough that we assumed it had finally gone, only for the small dark bird to reappear around the ship later. Whether it was resting during migration, had been blown offshore or had simply found itself unexpectedly far from land, we could not know.  Against the scale of the Norwegian Sea, the small terrestrial bird seemed almost absurdly vulnerable.  Yet it remained with or near the ship for several days, apparently adapting to circumstances as best it could.  Not every encounter involved a whale or spectacular concentration of seabirds.

The Starling would not be the only unexpected land bird to find refuge aboard Ambience. Later in the voyage, another birder and I discovered an American Woodcock tucked quietly beneath a deck chair, apparently exhausted after somehow finding itself far out at sea. The crew wisely left the bird undisturbed, and for a time the ship became something more than transportation through these northern waters: it became a small, accidental island of refuge for a bird that had nowhere else to land.

 

Beneath us, another landscape remained hidden. Deep basins, submerged ridges and northward-moving Atlantic waters shaped the Norwegian Sea despite being invisible from deck. Northern Fulmars, guillemots, kittiwakes and marine mammals moved through an ecosystem whose greater structure lay underwater. We had already become fascinated by submerged geography during earlier crossings, but here that hidden world seemed particularly relevant. Currents carrying warmer Atlantic water northward help shape the relatively complex marine environment along the Norwegian coast, linking what we could see above water with physical processes far below it.

 

Into the Arctic

 

Sometime during the night on our eighth day aboard Ambience, we crossed into the Arctic Circle.  There was no mountain pass, border marker or dramatic geographical feature to define the moment. One of the world's most recognizable lines of latitude simply passed beneath the hull while most on board slept, but by morning the environmental effects of travelling north had become increasingly difficult to miss. Temperatures had fallen, snow covered more of the surrounding mountains and our days were dominated by a type of twilight and low-angle sun.  

The landscapes around us were predominated by fjords and mountains that rose increasingly steeply from the dark waters below.  Settlements appeared as narrow bands of buildings between sea and mountain, looking remarkably small within the scale of the surrounding coast.

 

Light itself became one of the most interesting parts of the landscape. Even during daytime, the sun remained low, casting long shadows across. Cloud cover and fog could remove the upper half of a mountain entirely, while a brief opening might illuminate one valley or ridgeline for only a few minutes before the scene returned to grey. At sunrise, snow-covered peaks sometimes caught pink, orange or gold light while the water beneath them remained almost black.  

By this point in the voyage, we had moved beyond looking only for birds and marine mammals. Weather, landscapes, and changing light had become part of what we were watching from the deck – such was the dynamic wonder of coastal Norway.

 

Northern Lights Above Ambience

 

The increasing darkness also created the conditions for the natural phenomenon many people aboard had travelled north hoping to see – the Northern Lights.  Our first views of the Northern Lights were less obvious than photographs might lead someone to expect. Pale bands formed in the sky that could easily have been mistaken for thin cloud. Yet through cameras and cell phones, the skies could be seen as they detected green more clearly than our eyes. We learned quickly not to dismiss faint patches of brightness, because some gradually strengthened into unmistakable aurora while others simply disappeared. 

 

One evening after leaving Tromsø, we had returned to our cabin and were preparing for dinner when I switched on the television to check the bridge camera. Green swirls were clearly visible across the bridge camera relaying the heavens to our screen. Whatever we had intended to do next was forgotten. Warm clothing went back on, and within minutes we were outside with other passengers looking upward. 

 

With lights reduced on the upper decks, the darkness surrounding the ship became much deeper. Bands of colour stretched across the sky above us, fading, strengthening and changing shape while Ambience continued through narrow channels and along coastlines bordered by snow-covered mountains. At times the aurora thinned until we could barely distinguish it; minutes later another section brightened and began moving across the stars.

 

Later, during one of the outdoor astronomy sessions, the display intensified again. People stopped talking and turned away from whatever they had been doing simply to watch the skies. Some passengers cheered as the green light strengthened overhead. Others simply stood silently along the railings.

 

On the approach to Alta, the display became even more extraordinary. For hours the aurora faded and returned against a clear sky filled with stars and an almost full moon. At its brightest, green curtains were visible to the naked eye with traces of other colours mixed through them, and the light reflected faintly from the dark surface of the water below.  All in all, the dancing lights gave way to what was, for us, one of the most memorable experiences on board a ship I have ever been privileged to witness.

 

Humpbacks beneath an Arctic Dawn

 

Later on, as Ambience approached Alta, the atmosphere was entirely different. After nights of darkness and aurora, we woke to a broad fjord surrounded by steep cliffs and snow-covered mountains. As the sunrise began – on one side of the ship the skies became intensely orange, while on the other the rising light began touching the snowy summits, giving some slopes a warm pink glow and leaving neighbouring mountains in deep blue shadow. The water was unusually calm, reflecting portions of the sky and surrounding cliffs.  Almost immediately after reaching the upper deck, we heard an enthusiastic call from one of the ORCA observers at the front of the jogging track. Whales had been spotted!

 

By sheer luck, we were already standing in the right place. As a result, we spotted three Humpback Whales as they again surfaced in the calm water beside the ship, their dark backs appearing one after another before they arched downward. Then their flukes rose above the surface.

 

Against snow-covered mountains and the subdued colours of an Arctic dawn, the encounter was almost impossibly beautiful. Yet it happened quickly. The animals surfaced, breathed and disappeared as people tried to follow their movements through binoculars.  Sean managed to photograph the flukes, and members of the ORCA team suggested that we submit the images to Happywhale. Humpbacks can sometimes be identified individually by the patterns and markings on their tails, meaning that a photograph taken during a brief encounter from a cruise ship may potentially be matched with photographs made elsewhere and at other times.  

It was an especially satisfying culmination to the citizen-science thread that had been developing throughout the voyage. The ORCA observers had spent days encouraging passengers to watch the sea, explaining what to look for and demonstrating how sightings could be recorded. Now photographs from one of our most memorable encounters could potentially become part of a larger record of the movements of the very whales we had watched disappear beneath the surface.

 

Seals and Birds in Orkney

 

Whales and aurora were the most dramatic natural encounters of our northern journey, but they were not the whole of what nature offered.  Much of our time was spent watching the Norwegian coastline itself – which continually shifted and transformed amid bands of rainfall, cloud cover and changing light.  Rain blurred ridge lines, made vegetation glow with lushness, and bands of sunlight illuminated snow-covered peaks and small islands.  Much as the northern lights had reminded us – staying attentive to nature on a voyage is rarely simply about watching for birds and whales – it can also include landscapes, the geology of the ocean, and the vegetation of fjords, among so much more.

 

Having turned south, we returned to the islands of the United Kingdom where opportunities to experience and view nature shifted once more.  Around Kirkwall, Orkney, wildlife was suddenly close enough to study in detail. Harbour and Grey Seals rested near the waterfront or surfaced between boats, appearing and disappearing in sheltered water only a short distance from shore. Eurasian Curlews blended remarkably well into the muted tidal landscape, while Common Redshanks and Eurasian Oystercatchers moved through wet seaweed and shallow water. Nearby offshore, Common Eiders floated with Black Guillemots and a Red-breasted Merganser.

 

The concentration of birdlife increased when we reached the Peedie Sea. Ruddy Turnstones worked along the edges while Common Ringed Plovers, Common Redshanks, Red-breasted Mergansers, Tufted Ducks, Eurasian Wigeons, Long-tailed Ducks, Mallards, Mute Swans, and Whooper Swans all occupied the sheltered water.  After so many days looking across open ocean, the experience felt wonderfully intimate. Instead of searching kilometres of moving water for the brief appearance of a fin or trying to identify a seabird disappearing into the distance, we once again stood on shore and were able to spend time watching individual birds.

 

A Northern Nature Journey

 

Looking back on our seventeen days aboard Ambience, what remains most strongly is not the sequence of ports or potential excursions but the opportunities to experience nature while at sea.

 

We remember the wind tearing spray from North Sea waves while ORCA volunteers continued scanning the water. We remember Kittiwakes, Greater Black-backed Gulls and cormorants around Cromarty Firth.  We remember spotting a Humpback Whale and Harbour Seals as we approached Invergordon. Farther north, Northern Gannets and unidentified sea birds worked behind the ship while a European Starling repeatedly ventured out over the Norwegian Sea and somehow found its way back. We remember and hold dear how the bands of colours of the aurora moved above Ambience night after night. And we remember the diversity of life we spent time watching amid the sheltered waters of Orkney in the tidal flats and city wetlands.

 

Throughout the voyage, ORCA added another dimension to what we were seeing. Their volunteers did more than identify marine mammals or provide lectures aboard ship. They encouraged people to walk outside, look up, raise binoculars and begin seeing the waters around us in ways that they might never have done.   Some sightings became records, some photographs could potentially contribute to identification databases, and many encounters simply became memorable moments when a passenger discovered that the apparently empty sea was not empty at all.

 

All of which is what made Ambience such a rewarding journey. The ship carried us to remarkable places, but nature was never confined to the destinations printed on the itinerary. It was present between them - in rough water, working harbours, the wake behind the ship, distant whale blows, snow-covered mountains, and the changing northern sky.  For more than two weeks, all we really had to do was go outside and look.

 

See you on deck!