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!