Things tourists do: Typical Irish Family

As you can imagine I come into contact with a lot of tourists, and as a talkative person I quite enjoy chatting to tourists! You get all kinds of colourful people on holiday and I could recount many many tales of amusing events that I have been witness to, but right now I shall begin what I hope will be a regular segment of this blog.

Things tourists do: I was chatting to an Irish mother and daughter, they were asking the standard questions about what we saw then the daughter: "You don't sound Icelandic"
Me: "That's because I'm not Icelandic"
Daughter: "That makes sense, I'm as sharp as a crayon I am"
Mum: "Crayons aren't sharp"
Me: "A sharp crayon?"
Daughter: "Yeah a sharp crayon! So where are you from?"
Me: "England"
Daughter: "An Englishman eh? Mum I've found you an Englishman!"
Me: "Were you looking for an Englishman?"
Mum: "No"

They were mightily entertaining.

It's also been snowing here! Over night we got a nice blanket of it over the city and it made for a very picturesque scene.

Ain't that so pretty!

I'm trying out a focusing effect here, make the picture better?

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All about one picture

Over the last few days I've taken quite a few pictures and the plan would have been to give you the standard highlight reel that you would be accustomed to, but frankly I don't want to draw any attention from a picture I took today that I am very pleased with.

It's not even a cetacean, nor a mammal. It is a bird, and a common one at that.

That's right, just a common guillemot. But look at how close it is!  This. Never. Happens.

Look at the water droplets lingering on it's back! And you can see it's legs through the surface!

Mate. I am so happy with this.

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Dolphins are back!

The bay that I will be working in while I'm here is called Faxafloi Bay, and the predominant species in the bay are Minke Whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata) and White-Beaked Dolphins (Lagenorhynchus albirostris).

On a trip yesterday I got some rather cracking pictures of the dolphins, you'll be pleased to hear! And heeeeere they are:

 

 

 

 

As my pictures are being used for scientific studies and being shared by numerous agencies and people I have added to copyright just to highlight where credit is due ;)

 

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A new chapter begins...

So there we have it folks, I have left the delightful town of Húsavík and have moved to Reykjavik. The big city!!

But Húsavík did give me one last delightful and amazing gift before I left, another spectacular sunset!

Here I had the camera on an incorrect setting for this kind of thing, but the shot turned out to be very nice anyway!

As soon as I saw this I ran outside with my camera, unfortunately I had forgotten my shoes. It's safe to say the Spanish tourists I was standing with were a little confused and concerned at that!

So that was the end of that! I took my first research trip in Reykjavik this morning, there were three minke whales circling the boat which was very nice to see. But to be honest the thing I was most excited about was how many gannets there were, in my time in Húsavík I saw two gannets, today I saw five!

They look too big to fly!

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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!

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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.

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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!