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Whales More Frequent Guests in Iceland’s Fjords
Last weekend, three humpback whales were spotted in the West Fjords near the old whaling station in Suðureyri in Tálknafjörður. Moreover, large whales have been seen in the neighboring Patreksfjörður, also not a common fjord for whales to enter. “ It is relative novelty to see them here; large whales were first spotted in the fjord last year,” an employee of the Tálknafjörður aquafarm, told MBL. “There are usually five to six whales in a school. They have been spotted in Ísafjarðardjúp for many years but we haven’t heard of them in this territory until now. ” said Sverrir D. Halldórsson, an employee of the Icelandic Marine Research Institute’s whale division. “The humpback swims closest to the shore of the larger whales. The reason they are increasingly entering fjords is that there is more food there than before,” Sverrir explained. “The number of whales has gone up somewhat in the past years. We have numbers from 2007, which was when the latest count took place. The next one is scheduled for 2015,” Sverrir concluded.
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Humpback in the bay today ..... from our blog diary
Humpback whale back in the bay ~ Wonderful ;) Humpback whales typically migrate up to 25,000 kilometres each year and feed over the summer time in polar waters , and that for quit often we are about to see them here in our bay , ones there are on there way up north ~ they stop here for several day cause of the reach feeding grounds Faxi bay got to offer . We headed strait out towards whale area and actually just were to enjoy the outside scenery ~ still far from the feeding grounds as we suddenly spotted a huge blow right ahead our vessel and when the animal surfaced we saw the famous fluke of an humpback whale , distance approx only 20 meters . Happily we were screaming for joy and waited for the animal to surface again which happened right after and pretty close to our boat . We've gotten really nice moments with this creature while it remained close to our vessel for some time , but soon the Humpback changed its behaviour and headed towards direction Reykjavik , unbelievably close to land and then again moved towards the bay ~ for some then while we weren't able to see much of the animal and waited for a long time for it to surface again , but we were really happy on the beginning of our tour when we saw the Humpback fairly close to our vessel ! We kept distance to the animal and just when we was about to leave we had one more good moment watching the Humpback surfacing by only 20 meters distance . Quit often we saw the fluke when the animal wend and disappeared for a dive ~ it always was one big event for us ;) Really lucky tour and on our way back home we visited the puffin island where we had a good time observing the little clowns of the sea close to our boat and also gathering by the island in front of there nests . Fantastic evening tour ~ we are so happy ;)