Our largest resident is back !!!
During the morning tour, chilly northwestern winds were bringing all the cold from Greenland. Our boat Nàttfari was navigating on a rather choppy sea. Fortunately it didn’t take long before we spotted our first humpback whale, always lifting its gracious fluke very high into the air, and disapprearing almost vertically into the depths. A few minutes later, we found our second humpback, making lazy dives but accepting to come close to us several times. Some French guests, used to rough seas, were cheering up the rest of the boat by singing old sailor songs. Good mood was at its top.
In the afternoon, the wind speed started to decrease, and the sea was somewhat flatter. The sun was sometimes shining. Suddenly, a high blow (maybe 9 meter tall) caught our attention. Only one cetacean is able to blow so high: the blue whale. In other words: our biggest resident and the largest and heaviest creature ever to have swum in the oceans. Our joy was complete. Once again it proved that every trip is exciting and unique. We hadn’t sighted any blue whale for about one month. Soon we could watch its massive blue silhouette swimming along the surface, near Gardar, another of our boats. The whale arched its enormous body and rose its thick tail before going beneath the surface. It came up again a few minutes later. But since the blue whales are famous for their underwater speed, it emerged quite far away from the place where it dove. We had the opportunity to get closer, and it’s always a thrilling experience to realize how colossal these whales can be, when they swim near the boat. Not far away, we met two inseparable humpback whales, coming side by side towards us. Before heading back to Húsavík, we watched the blue whale again, concluding another fantastic day despite the autumn weather.
Stéphan