North Sailing News

The Marine Research Institute of Iceland just reported on their webpage www.hafro.is that they have been tracking a blue whale by satellite. The satellite transmitter was put in the blue whale here in Skjálfandi Bay on June 23rd or 56 days ago. During that time the blue whale has traveled approximately 7.700 km. It stayed in Skjálfandi for a week and then it moved to the northwestern part of Iceland where it stayed until July 13th. From there it traveled to the eastern shore of Greenland before turning south again and yesterday morning it was 130 km SSW of Reykjanes. A map of the travels of this blue whale can bee seen in this link:

http://www.hafro.is/hvalamerki/steypireydur.html 

A blue whale in Skjálfandi Bay earlier this summer

The Marine Research Institue is hoping that they will keep on getting signals from this blue whale so that they can get information about it's wherabouts in the wintertime but soon most of the baleen whales start to migrate south.

The institute plans on doing further researches like this one on baleen whales to hopefully get a clearer picture of the travels of baleen whales around Iceland.

More information on this blue whale can be found in Icelandic on the Marine Research Institute's webpage: http://www.hafro.is/undir.php?ID=19&nanar=1REF=3&fID=9746

ÞJ