Minkes and a BREACHING Humpack whale – photos!
The sea was calmer and the conditions better then yesterday, when captain Hrólfur an I went out on “Bjössi Sör” at 10:00 this morning.
At that time, we did not know yet that it would turn out to be a really great tour.
After sailing for about 30 minutes, a passenger told us about a blow that he had seen a bit further away and he was absolutely right: there was a humpback whale in the middle of the bay.
We went into the area and while we were waiting for the humpback whale to come up again, we saw a minke whale not far away from the boat, quite calm on the surface.
So we had a “problem of luxury”: Which whale should we watch first?
We decided to have a look at the minke whale for a while, which was really nice, because the whale was spending a lot of time close to the surface, almost resting, and we were able to watch it several times very close to the boat.
After watching the minke whale for a few minutes, we decided to have a look at the humpback whale. Also the humpback whale was not diving very long and we were watching it for 15-20 minutes, surfacing really close to the boat a few times. And then, all of a sudden, he jumped completely out of the water, not more than 30 metres away from the boat, what an amazing sight!!!!
It came completely unexpected and he jumped only once, but almost everybody on board saw it and some passengers, like Damien Saffroy from the Research Center here in Húsavík, even managed to take a picture of the breaching humpback whale (see below).
Soon after that we left the humpback whale and on the way back, we had just finished serving a cup of hot chocolate and a cinnamonn roll, another minke whale popped up quite close to the boat. A nice way to end the tour and when we came back into the harbour, everyone on board was smiling. Just a great tour on a cold September morning.
On the second tour (at 13:30) we did not find the humpback whale again, but like in the morning tour we managed to watch a minke whale quite close to the boat a few times.
Christian, guide
