THE ENCOUNTER OF THE ARCTIC LOVERS
We started the trip at 11:00 in the afternoon in good weather conditions. We were sailing for almost 30 minutes on AMMA SIGGA looking for the whales. Today, they seemed to be so far away from the harbour, we had to go all the way out to Flatey. When we arrived to that place, it started to get foggy and even rainy - and we could not see any whales…
Ten minutes later we finally spotted two humpback whales in the same area! What a surprise! We could recognize both of them. The first we saw we called “Barnacle”. This whale is very big and elegant. It has a big and beautiful barnacle on top of the dorsal fin. It was the same whale that we saw “sleeping“ (resting) on the surface two days ago. The second one was famous “Snow White”. It has a totally white fluke and is quite friendly: we could see this whale jumping and friendly behaving with us other days.
That day, they were busy with feeding for some minutes. Sometimes they appeared very close to the boat, so we could see all the details of their skin and feel the smelly breath in our faces.
But the magic moment was when we stopped the boat. Suddenly the whales met in front of our boat and they started to swim very close to each other, totally synchronized moving around the boat…
They were coming up to the surface, showing almost all the head, the harmonic breathing and the elegance when showing the flukes at the same time before going down.
The feeling for me was as if they were lovers from long ago, suddenly meeting again in Skjálfandibay. This moment, together with the foggy landscape and the cool atmosphere inspired me to call this whales “The arctic lovers” =)
- Belén
The first humpback, named after the significant barnacle on his dorsal fin.
PHOTO: Belén Garcia Ovide
Snow White showing her completely white fluke.
PHOTO: Sarah Arndt (Juni 2014)
