A last day to remember

So today is the final day of my adventure in Skalfandi Bay, tomorrow I move to Reykjavik and will be staying their for the remainder of my placement.
And the last day certainly did not disappoint, (the morning trip anyway), the whale Snow White is the last whale in the bay and put on a little show for us. How nice!
He was doing some incredible surface feeding extremely close to the boat, I have a picture of surface feeding from a while ago that you may remember but that was at a fair distance away. This was so much closer and so much more awesome.

Right away Snowy lunged up beside the boat, I wasn't quick enough to snap the immediate lunge but I did catch his head come crashing down!

Here he is rolling over in the water and you can actually get a peek at his underside.

Here's the highlight!

You can even see the whale pushing water out of its mouth to filter the water away from the food!

Thanks for reading!

Minke madness!

While it wasn't minke madness, it was certainly surprisingly good! I was worried that there would be nothing to report for a while, the last two days have heralded exactly 0 humpback whales and yesterday there was a very brief encounter with a minke whale but that was it. The omens weren't looking good!

The trip started slowly enough, after around 30 mins we had seen our first minke, it was a tiny one and didn't stick around. It took a lot more searching before we encountered Mr Sociable.

But the time came eventually! We approached this minke whale and managed to get quite close to it, then it dove and surfaced within a few metres of the boat and stayed with us for a couple of minutes. It then reappeared some distance away and when we went back to the whale it was happy to swim with us for a while again!

And as we were heading back a very large minke suddenly appeared right in front of the boat and we almost hit it! It literally came out of nowhere!

I've never got a good head shot of a minke before!

Only minke whales in the northern hemisphere have these distinct white bands on the pectoral fins.

Thanks for reading!

Groups aplenty!

Well today had a lot to offer, the weather was perfect and the whales were active. Over the day we must have seen at least 10 different humpback whales and even a minke whale (briefly). The morning trip was a standard one and I was wondering whether to bother giving an update after it. The afternoon trip though! This was special due to the constant close proximity of the whales to the boat, plus the tourists were in a very excitable mood. It makes every trip better if the passengers are enthusiastic and excited about what they see!

While what I've said may suggest some fantastic pictures I won't be able to provide many, due a dodgy shoulder I chose to spend much of the trip simply watching the whales. And I'll be honest, I enjoyed that much more than when I would normally be taking as many pictures as possible.
It's amazing how quickly photography turns from a hobby into an obsession, how you can lose sight of the beauty in front of you. I realised I had been seeing frames of whales more than I had been seeing whales, and how visceral and fantastic seeing a huge humpback whale dive metres away from you can be.

While this won't detract from my blogging or my photography I just thought this is an important message, taking pictures isn't the most important thing in the world!

Here's some pretty ones from today though:

Thanks for reading!

Mountains of delight

Well today I set myself the task of getting a good photograph of the humpback whales with the still snowy mountains setting the background. This was accomplished! I am very pleased with some of shots.

The mountains even without whales looked incredible!

It was definitely one of the most scenic tours I've been on, some northern lights/sunset and it would have been complete!

Thanks for reading!

Back on the boats!

Today was the holy day where the weather returned to a normal state and the sea became less than fatal.

And the mountains across the bay have been powdered with a layer of snow that looks incredible!

You can imagine how it looks when these gorgeous beasts loom over you with a whale diving in the foreground...

All three pictures are of the whale with the lovely name 'Mong'. On this tour we also saw 'Little Ajax' and 'Snow White'. There were others but they were at an unrecognisable distance.

Thanks for reading!

The waiting game

It's been four days since we got to go on the boats. We've had very strong winds, nearly constant rain and yesterday quite a bit of snow. But today the weather has gotten much better and there is even a chance a boat will be going out later today, this is very exciting news. 

I took a picture of the mountain behind Húsavík (with my phone, thus the quality) so you can see how winter is well and truly on it's way here!

Also after the last boat trip I realised that I did not inform you of something interesting that happened! We saw two humpback whales close up and both of them were happy to perform some tail acrobatics, both were fluke slapping the water and one was lob-tailing (lifting the fluke into the air and leaving it there like a flagpole). I got an excellent shot of the lob-tailing, but not the slapping unfortunately.

The keenest of readers (or researchers) will recognise this fluke as the fluke of snow white, thanks snowy!

Thanks for reading!

I don't know whether the weather will be clement

Brace yourself. I'm about to show you the weather forecast.

Yeah we won't be going on the boat for a while. Though the prospect of 80km/h wind and 8m of swell is enticing in a roller coaster/vomit educing kind of way.

Thanks for reading

It's a whale-a-thon!

Over the last week or two there has been an incredible increase in the amount of whales in the bay, and today was the pinnacle of that peak (so far). I am unsure of the exact number of individual whales we saw today but it is around 8-10, and they were all concentrated in a very small area. Plus the first minke whale sighted in weeks and weeks! It was an insane trip, there was barely a minute that went by without another whale being sighted somewhere nearby. We were constantly on the move but we barely moved at all!

The weather is due to seriously deteriorate tomorrow and possibly over the next few days, so the chances of the boats going out are not looking the best.

New snow all over Skalfandi Bay! We could be getting snow in town over the weekend.

This cormorant loved sitting in the harbour.

And was there for a long time.

This is the huge fluke of Hector.

This whale (named Hector) is bloody huge! Definitely the biggest humpback I've seen, and his blow is just as impressive. Even from under water it makes a huge splash.

The humpback with the patchy dorsal fin is Hector again

Minke! We've missed your elusive presence!

This whale (we just named this second) is called Little Ajax.

This whale is called Messy.

Thanks for reading!

Three's a photogenic crowd

This'll be a very short post as there's not a big story to tell.

Lately there has been a trio of humpback whales that like to hang out together, well I finally got a picture with all three in the shot! They rarely all surface at the same time. It is cool to see and hear them communicate, not via any singing as you'd expect, they would fluke slap and trumpet at the surface if they were up alone. I don't know if this kind of strong friendship bond has been documented in humpbacks but here it some serious proof it exists.

What was also entertaining is that the dolphins took great pleasure in harassing the whales, if the dolphins were bored of playing with our boat they would happily go swim all around the whales and even jump over them. The whales hate this and make it known.

This different species interaction is always so fascinating to watch!

Triple humpback!

I also got some amazing shots of this juvenile kittiwake that was flying just inches away from my head at times!

Thanks for reading!