Saturday, 30 March 2019

Today we had incredible tour with White beaked dolphins! We sailed all the way to Olafsfjordur where we found this amazing group of dolphins. At first we saw them speeding and it looked a bit like they were running away from something but we didn’t spot any potential predators in the area, also we were the only boat there. At some point they slowed down and seemed to stay in a certain area - then we spotted the buoys of fishing nets so it might be that they weren’t actually running away but speeding in reaction to “cry for help”. Of course we can’t know that for sure, we could only be sure if we’d go underwater but fishing nets are one of the biggest dangers to cetaceans and if there would be an entangled individual deep in the water, we couldn’t help him. This is why it is so important to rise awareness of this problem and hopefully with time - create better rules for fishing industries. We stayed there for a longer while at some point being surrounded by dolphins. Few of them approached us following the boat on the side just a meter away. We could also notice many playful, younger individuals among them and this is always a precious sighting to watch.

Pictures and Text: Ania Wojcik