Thursday, 18 November 2021

Another cloudy but beautiful day in the fjord. The sea was so calm, we had perfect conditions to be on a look out for any movements at the surface. Today we found 3 Humpback whales and among them was our star visitor Arheta Frankfin! Unfortunately we didn’t manage to capture the flukes of the other two so we hope to find them again tomorrow. One of our passengers was very curious of whale’s intelligence and a great discussion occurred. It’s no secret that the brain size in the animal kingdom corresponds to a body size and we as humans stand out of that pattern having the biggest brains in proportion to the body size but there’s more to that. According to his knowledge, the intelligence & instincts are related to the structure of the brain and how close neurons are to each other. He used the example of cats, that have very small brains but their neurons are very closely connected which affects their speed and focusing skills. Our neurons are also closely connected, how is it with whales? We quickly started searching through available information but it left us with no clear answers. We easily found a picture of Humpback whale’s brain compared with other animals including humans and a lot of research stating great intelligence in this species. It’s interesting to think that maybe all we try to understand about them could be beyond our understanding and everything we know is perhaps just an interpretation of what makes sense to us on earth or is in a reference to experiences with other animals. A quite philosophical discussion was taking a place on board today, but left everyone with an uplifting feeling that if these huge, gentle animals out smart more than we can imagine, we just encountered 3 of them and it was absolutely beautiful.

Pictures & Text: Ania Wojcik

Departures today: 13:00 Classic