Saturday, 12 January 2019
On cloudy morning in Akureyri we left the harbor without any surprises. We started from looking out for Northern Bottlenose Whales that we’ve seen yesterday but we couldn’t spot them so we moved on, further north. This does not necessarily mean they are not there any more, but at this point we can’t know that for sure - like they say “prepare for the worst, hope for the best” - we will continue monitoring the situation again tomorrow. It took us not more than half an hour to see our first Humpback whale that seemed to be a young individual, as he wasn’t very big and he was definitely what we call a “Lazy Fluker” - he didn’t show us his fluke not even once and we’ve seen him going for a dive at least several times! We decided to leave him and headed out further north where we found another Humpback whale! and possibly one more were in the distance, but as the wind was picking up and all of the sudden we became surrounded by strong fog that was limiting visibility, the conditions were not the easiest to spot the animals. We stayed with this whale for some time and it was a great decision as suddenly he popped up right next to us! What an encounter! The whale seemed to be very relaxed, surfacing often, he kept us company till the end of the tour. On the way back we spotted one more Humpback Whale, but unfortunately we didn’t have a chance to get closer to him anymore. Great day to be out there, by the time we came back everything was covered in the snow. Winter is back :-)
Pictures and Text: Ania Wójcik