20 July 2022

Species seen today: Humpback whale, minke whale

The wind cleared up the sky, creating excellent visibility, but also a bit of white caps at the sea surface. Regardless choppy sea, we found few big flocks of birds feeding, indicating possible presence of whales feeding under the sea surface too. First we were enjoying watching a full grown minke whale feeding quite close to our boat. Minke was coming up in high speed, chasing fish, with mouth open, few times rolled on the side, creating splashes and even rising part of its tail above sea surface. It chased the fish to the surface layers, so numerous gulls were taking opportunity to cach it easily, making noise and fighting for it. There were also lots of marine birds, fishing on their own - storm petrels and fulmars gliding above surface, sheerwaters, guillemots and puffins diving...After that great sighting, we went to the area where a humpback whale was seen. Humpback was displaying regular 6 minutes dives, but would come for 4-5 breaths and was fluking up, so we had good look at it. It flucked its magnificent white fluke just in front of us twice! On our way back, we stopped by other 2 big flocks of birds feeding, each with a minke whale underneath them. We stayed with one, a bit smaller minke, which decided to come within just 10 meters from our boat couple of times! On our ride back we also enjoyed watching puffins, flying in full speed, carring fishes in their beak, bringing them to their pufflings. Great day!