Tuesday, 5 March 2024

Our tour today was a roller coaster, however, the weather stayed consistent; warm and overcast with a minor southern wind.

We sailed out to just North of Svalbarðseyri where we had our first encounter, we could see a blow near another whale watching boat operating in the area, but, decided to first focus on a second blow we spotted around the same latitude to the West. Both were Humpback Whales. We stayed with our first whale while it slowly made its way travelling to the middle of the fjord where both whales convened. From this point we saw both whales and now both were showing their flukes with more typical dives. We kept our distance, maintaining a very slow speed with minimal moving, but, where treated to a close encounter when the whale emerged around 20 meters from the side of our boat. As we were stationary the whale swam right below us out of sight and reappeared in spectacular fashion via a spinning breach on our right side. An amazing sight. The whale then continued its previous behaviour shallow diving and lifting the fluke just above the behaviour. The whale maintained a very calm behaviour throughout and showed no signs of distress or discomfort. A great encounter.

*Here, I have attached the first pictures, kindly taken and given use of permsion by one of our passengers Hugo. The last picture in the series is the picture I captured of the same moment, whoops.

Text & Photos: Mac

Departure: 1300 Classic