Species seen today: humpback whale, minke whales, white-beaked dolphins

Today was a mix of sea and weather conditions. The morning was a lot more calm and then then the wind and rain picked up for our afternoon tour. Despite this, both tours saw lots of animals! There was certainly a lot of life out in the bay today! Both in the morning and afternoon, we saw three out of the four species we regularly find in the bay. The minke whales we saw today were mostly feeding and not too interested in us but on both tours we were able to see them nicely with a couple coming quite close to the boat. The white-beaked dolphin pods were very different between the two tours. In the morning it was a fairly big pod that was spread out among a few boats. Two individuals paid special attention to our boat, coming really close to check us out. Then in the afternoon, it was a smaller pod that had a few calves in the group so were a little more wary of us and kept their distance. They did treat us to some high jumps though, jumping so high we could see their whole bodies! The humpback that we saw today was the same individual on both tours, the famous Mariupol! He was very busy feeding the whole day today but that meant he gave us really nice views of his tail when he went down for deeper dives. In the morning tour, he also surprised the whole boat when he surfaced from his deep dive really close to our boat! You never know what you will see when you go out whale watching and today the rain was definitely worth it!