There She Blows!

Posted by Lisa at 11:16 AM, June 27, 2005

Humpback whale in Husavik © Greenpeace

As soon as we woke up I called Abbi and told him we wanted to go whale watching and he very kindly organised it for us. The weather looked great, which made a nice change from the endless drizzle and cloudiness, which we'd had the past few days. As we walked through the village along by the harbour I was delighted at how picturesque it all was. Across the bay were snowy mountains reflected in the ocean and there were several brightly coloured fishing boats dotted about the harbour along with some very attractive whale watching vessels. I later discovered that these are traditional Icelandic fishing boats which have been restored. They are certainly the nicest whale watching boats I have ever seen.

Stefan, Johanna and I got on board one of them with great anticipation. I was hoping to catch a glimpse of a blue whale which the Greenpeace Iceland crew had seen here last year but I was looking forward to seeing ANY species of whale since I actually hadn't seen anything apart from a fin throughout the entire trip. There are a total of 12 known cetacean species, which visit the this area and these include: orcas, Atlantic white sided dolphins, humpback, pilot, sei, minke, sperm and blue whales.

As soon as we set out from the docks we saw white beaked dolphins (very common here), which hung around while everyone tried very hard to capture one with their camera. Later, someone spotted a blow in the distance. It was a humpback and it was feeding. For those of you who don't know, you can tell when a humpback is feeding when it is deep diving very frequently and you know when it is deep diving because it raises its back and fluke high into the air before it dissapears. The nice thing about this activity is that you stand a good chance to get one of those tail shots, which everyone loves including scientists who use them for identification purposes. Naturally everyone on the boat was fighting for the best photo opportunity. It was kind of funny to watch a load of people run all over the decks frantically. I don't know who was more entertaining in the end. The humpback or the tourists?

The humpback came up and went down all around the boat for about an hour. It was so close we could hear it. At one point it made such a loud hollow snorting noise I actually felt the sound vibrations in addition to hearing them. People's cameras were clicking at several shots a second. Gaduk gaduk gadukadukaduk..... everyone was loving it!

I talked to a British couple on board who told me that they would not come to Iceland if it resumed commercial whaling. They were quite concerned about the "scientific" whaling but didn't know much about it. I know that many pro-whaling people think that whales should not be treated differently to other animals but the simple fact remains that people will not make travel decisions based on where the cows are and they will not pay large amounts of money to go onto a farm and take pictures of pigs. Telling us that there is nothing special about whales does not stop people wanting to see them alive rather than dead. If whaling countries continue to ignore this then they are the ones who will continue to lose out.

Lesley and Tony from the UK enjoy whale watching in Iceland but will go elsewhere if Iceland resumes commercial whaling

Just before we headed back to shore we spotted a minke whale, which was also feeding. I had never seen a minke before so I was very pleased. They don't do the tail thing but they can jump out of the water! So we saw 3 species out of the 12. Not bad for just 3 hours out on the water. You can do longer tours here if you want to and can even go out on a schooner.

Husavik is the whale watching capital of Europe and is well worth a visit not simply for the whales but because the entire area is extremely beautiful. However, you'll have to wait till Iceland stops whaling if you have taken the pledge and if you haven't well, what are you waiting for?.

I still want to tell you about the rest of the day in Husavik but that will have to be in another post.

Till then
L.