An unexpected encounter

Today the weather was typical Icelandic: Sun and clouds alternated with brief rain showers and a strong wind was blowing from south-east. But the temperatures reminded of the late summer.

On our tours we encountered two humpback whales. Both of them seem to like Skjálfandi Bay, we observed them already earlier this season. They spent a lot of time on the surface and we got some very close looks at them.

Furthermore we spotted a harbor porpoise, but it was quite difficult to observe these small whales in between the waves.

But this morning we had another very surprising encounter: Close to the mountains in the west we suddenly saw a breaching whale! First it slapped with the tail and then it jumped completely out of the water!!!! It was amazing. But what was very special about this was the fact, that we weren’t sure about the species! It was definetly none of the most common ones. It had the size of a minke whale, but was less torpedo-shaped than these whales. Also the jump seemed a bit clumsy and the shape of the fluke was different from a minke whale. And taking the dark-brownish color into account, we are quite sure that we just observed a northern bottlenose whale. This species was spotted already last year in our bay at around the same time. So maybe they’re back? We should definitely be on the lookout for them in the next few days!

Luisa, guide