North Sailing News

July 30th 2009

Humpback with Mouth wide open!

Yesterday was special for me. The bay has been rather quiet for the last few days and the weather has been a bit gray although we have managed to find the whales in every trip so far. So I was feeling somewhat pessimistic when going out for the 8:30 trip yesterday morning and me and cpt. Hjalti decided to sail southwest to where we had found some Minke Whales the day before. After a while though we saw a spout in the distance and I thought it was a Minkes blow because we the Humpback Whales have not been in the bay for few days now.

When we got closer the bird life got very lifely, Puffins, Arctic Terns, Kitty Wakes, Seagulls and others circling over the same spot and sitting on the surface. That usually means that they are feeding and we could actually see the Terns diving down and surfacing again whith Sand Eels in their beaks. Experience tells us that underneath such bird life the Minke Whales are often diving since the feed on the same as the birds so we slowed Knörrinn down and waited.

And indeed that paid off! Snout first, the whale surfaced right in the middle of the bird crowd with mouth wide open. I was expecting a Minke whale but no, a Humpback it was. This happened only few meters from the boat and two thoughts crossed my mind; number one, why am I speechless, it is my job to tell the passengers what is happening, and number two, why oh why do I not have my camera like I am used to!?

Lucky for me the passengers took some great pictures and our friends Janet and Pam were kind enough to give us a copy of theirs. No words can describe this so I will let their pictures do the talking.