Monday, 21 May 2018

After the strong wind of yesterday, which did not allow us to go out for our usual tours, the water inside our beautiful fjord this morning returned calm and still as a lake. With such great conditions even a sneaky minke whale could not escaped at our eyes, trained to detect any movements and dark shapes on the surface. The minke whale was diving in the shallow waters in front of the beautiful valley of Hörgárdalur, and stayed quite close to the boat, allowing our passengers to have some nice sightings. After a while we left the minke, heading further out, looking for our favourite guys: the humpack whales! Just the time to turn the boat towards the deeper waters in the middle of the fjord that we spotted a blow on the opposite side, on the east coast. Soon we realised that around us there were three humpack whales feeding. One of them showed its beautiful fluke all out of the water every time it was diving, and we found out it was a new whale still not present in our catalogue (p.s. any name suggestions?). But the other two were already very well known: they were Depill and Kriller! Depill is very easy to identify since its fluke pattern is plenty of small black spots (in fact Depill means dot in Icelandic). Kriller got such an amazing name that really suits him. As well as the other humpack whales, Kriller is very greedy of krill (very small crustaceans found in all the world oceans), and he would eat as much as he can any time he has the occasion! The afternoon trip was not less surprising: we found again our humpbacks just few minutes after leaving the harbour. They were feeding just in front of Akureyri, few meters away from the docks, showing how neither boats nor super shallow waters can bother them when they are focused on their favourite activity!;)

Text and pictures by Annalisa Sambolino and Liza Roger