Dolphin giving birth!
I was going out two trips this day with Captain Óli and our deckhand Teresa.
On the first one it did not take us long to find a really curious and calm minke whale. He came close to the boat a couple of times, so that we could even see the white bands on the flippers shining through the water. Everyone on board was amazed how calm he was. We continued our way further rout north of the bay and also managed to find some white-beaked dolphins which were quite playful around the boat.
The second trip started off being a bit tricky because we did not manage to find the minke whale again. However, we got word from one of the other boats that they found a really large groups of dolphins north-west of the island Lundey. So we were heading there. While approaching we could already see some black dorsal fins coming up at the surface.
Suddenly we realized a group of three dolphins behaving in kind of a strange way: one was splashing around in a very unusual way seeming to move the whole body in every direction and the other two were circling this one. They disappeared for a couple of minutes but then we found them again: or rather they found us coming right next the boat. And they brought a really small baby-dolphin which they were pushing up to the surface to breath. The little one was keeping really close to its mother and it somehow looked a bit crumpled and the dorsal fin also did not look in shape. They were staying with us for at least 10 minutes after some thinking we were sure that we were just taking a look at a newly born white-beaked dolphin.
It has not been witnessed many times before, but it is known that dolphins move their body in every direction when they are giving birth. It is also known that members of the group often protect the mother and help with the calf. So this must have been what had just happened in front of our eyes; a baby dolphin was born there! The mother actually somehow injured herself, still bleeding out of quite a long cut on her side but she seemed fine anyway. We watched them for some more minutes during which they always stayed close to the boat pushing the baby up once and again. This has been such a special experience and everyone on board was really overwhelmed. Even though we did not manage to find any bigger whales on that trip, a group of happy passengers and a happy crew left the boat in the harbour that were just lucky enough to have a once-in-a-lifetime-experience!
The following pictures were taken by deck hand Teresa.
