Orca! It happened!

The entire time I have been in Iceland I have held out hope that we would get a chance to see Killer Whales, on every trip we all held a slight hope that in our peripheral vision we would see a large, black, triangular dorsal fin rise out of the water!

And this week my friend Charla came to visit, (we lived together in Húsavík) and on the one trip she decided to join me on the boat....

OORRRCCAAAAAA! (Orcinus orca)

We were downstairs as the boat was heading back to harbour, I was just doing a data sheet for the dolphins we had seen earlier when the guide announced "There is a large black fin at 10 o'clock". I grabbed my coat and camera and ran upstairs, and after a minute or two it appeared! A lone male killer whale all in its beauty and splendour!

The dorsal fin can tell us the sex and age of an orca

The tall, triangular shape tells us he is a male. A females would be shorter and look more like a minke whales dorsal.

The wave/bump in the middle of the dorsal tells us this guy is older as this feature only appears after 16 years. 

It is actually very unusual to see a lone orca, as they normally travel in pods and have extremely strong bonds in those pods. We have a few theories as to to why:
He had gotten ill and so the pod may have kicked him out as he was a burden.
He is a transient killer whale, these are less inclined to travel in pods and will hunt for mammals alone sometimes.
I believe that this was a scout who was checking out the food content of the bay, we can hope that he got a good impression and brings the whole family!

Thanks for reading!

A long awaited journey

The weather has been beyond awful in the last two weeks, I have only managed to take a boat trip twice in that time. Both provided many dolphins for us to feast our eyes on but only the most recent provided anything worth seeing/mentioning.

The first of these two trips gave us a very large pod of dolphins that were content to be near our boat for a long time but rarely came very close. The birthing season for white-beaked dolphins (Lagenorhynchus albirostris) is from June to September and so we saw a few gorgeous calves! I really wish I had a picture but as they are so small the surfacing part of their body is almost invisible in the waves.

The second trip heralded more dolphins for us, this pod again carried calves and juveniles but the highlight was a number of adults vertically breaching over and over again. As I have previously mentioned, this is a feeding technique which is meant to stun and drive any fish under the surface into a tight ball. And it never fails to delight!

We are currently experiencing a long storm in Iceland at the minute, and for the next few days I don't think a break will occur. Though next week I plan on voyaging with some friends along the Snæfellsnes peninsula, in the winter there is a population of resident killer whales that has been noted in that area. And we hope to catch a glimpse of them! And if I do, I will take hundreds of pictures to show off!

Thanks for reading!

Airwaves and Auroras

So this weekend my parents came to visit! And by coincidence they arrived during the Iceland Airwaves festival, the largest music festival in Iceland. I had thought that all but a few of the events were just for festival wristband owners but it turns out I was incredibly wrong! Over the course of 5 days there were over 400 events across the city, of course these were all on over the same few hours each day. So it would only be physically possible to see maybe 50 of these events, I saw 6. Though that was because we had not planned on this festival even happening so we had plans to see the Golden Circle again (but in Winter!) and eat at restaurants every night.

Out of the 6 acts I saw there were 3 that were totally stand-out performers: Vigri, The Anatomy of Frank and John Grant. With John Grant being the major highlight, I would recommend everyone looks him and the other bands up. They're all worth a listen.

The Golden Circle proved as magnificent as last time, my love of things icy made everything look even more magical to me! Pictures will explain it all better:

This time of the year is when the brown trout make their migration to their spawning grounds so we got a great sight of the trout (very slowly) moving up river.

Ice!

Lots more ice!

Ice plus waterfall!

Ice + more ice + huge waterfall. Wow.

And on the last night of this mini-holiday the weather forecast had told us that the sky would be completely clear and that there was a chance of auroral activity. So we headed out to the lighthouse at the end of the Reykjanes peninsular (where quite a few aurora enthusiasts were also hanging out) and lo and behold! The aurora presented itself!

When you've got the stars and the city lights AND the aurora, you get something magnificent.

You can even see the lateral movement from the aurora here

Look at that! The lighthouse with a gorgeous swirl above! Plus other camera lights but we'll just ignore those.

As you may have seen my aurora pictures keep (in my opinion) improving, I really hope to convey what I actually see but this kind of photography is difficult and I hope to keep getting better. But no picture can ever really translate the emotion that this spectacle delivers, I've seen a lot of people reduced to tears watching them and you really cannot blame them. I don't know if there is anything as humbling and inspiring as the aurora, especially when it is in full colour wheel mode!

Thanks for reading!