A quiet night of humpback whales

The evening trip this Saturday belonged to me. I left the harbour with captain Hreiðar and 10 passengers on Bjössi Sör, leaving behind us the noise of this year's town festival. We were also the only boat out in the bay this evening which gave us extra pressure.

Hreiðar and I had just returned from a previous trip so we headed straight to the place we saw the whales last. It took a long time to get there but we found a friend of ours, Skarði, pretty easily. Skarði has been in the bay for a few weeks now and also visited us last year. Its fluke is tattered; a big chunk of it is missing and it has many big scars that make it easy to recognise. But Skarði was a bit difficult to follow, always surfaced far away from the boat and was hard to spot for our passengers. Soon the captain and I noticed a few more blows around us, all humpback whales, so we chose one to follow. But all the whales proved elusive and it seemed for a long time we would not be able to get close to any of them.

But we need not have worried. At some point it seems that we stumbled upon a whale feast because all of a sudden there were 5 humpbacks circling the boat, coming up to breathe once and then diving down again with short intervals, all around the boat! Our passengers could look in any direction and feel confident they would spot a whale sooner or later. 🙂

All in all a great trip; the weather was good and the hot chocolate topped the evening off.

Helga, guide.