Blue whales in Ólafsfjörður and Northern Bottlenose Whales in Húsavík
Blue whales were seen on our trips from Ólafsfjörður. Northsailing’s boat Knörrinn is sailing out from Ólafsfjörður, a town close to Akureyri and Siglufjörður in North Iceland.
It is not very common to see blue whales in that area this time of the whale wathcing season, so this just tells us that anything can happen!
Which was also a fact in Skjálfandi bay, Húsavík, were Northern Bottlenose Whales (ísl: andanefja) were spotted yesterday!
“The northern bottlenose whale is endemic to the North Atlantic Ocean and is found in cool and subarctic waters such as the Davis Strait, the Labrador Sea, the Greenland Sea and the Barents Sea. They prefer deep waters. The total population is unknown but likely to be of the order of 10,000.
On 20 January 2006, a northern bottlenose whale was spotted in Central London in the River Thames.
Prior to the beginning of whaling of northern bottlenoses it is estimated that there were 40,000–50,000 individuals in the North Atlantic.
Norway stopped hunting the whale in 1973 but northern bottlenose whales are still hunted in the Faroe Islands.” – Wikipedia.org
