A LOVELY ARTICLE ABOUT A WHALE WATCHING EXPERIENCE WITH US
Jordi and his family were on a GG1 Whale Watching trip in July. On his website Jordi writes an article about his great whale watching experience on our oak boat Faldur. Below is the link to his website. Here you can read an translation of his article:
"Husavik Whale watching is one of the most interesting activities to do in North Iceland. Although there are other locations where you can do this activity, it seems that Húsavík is - with a 98 % success rate in high season - the place where chances of sighting are the greatest.
Gentle Giants, based in Husavik, is probably the most reliable company for whale watching in Iceland, so since we do not want to risk anything we choose this company to perform the activity. There are different departure times as Gentle Giants has several boats, but we decided to sail early by leaving the harbor at 8.45.
The ship named Faldur is a long and beautiful wooden boat of 15 meters.
The crew consisting of the captain and a guide presents and explains the safety rules before leaving.
We leave the harbor and sail out to sea. After half an hour we see the first spouts at the horizon. Our guide Sandra tells us that depending on the power of the blow it is possible to see if it was a humpback whale, which is the most common visitor in the bay, or if it was the world's largest animal - the blue whale, which measures up to 30 meters! The guides told us some surprising data as for example the blue whale calves suckle about 270 liters of milk a day.
It seems to be more likely to see humpbacks as there are not many blues left - the most optimistic reports are talking of 10 or 12 thousand individuals, of which less than 2,000 are staying on the northern hemisphere.
Suddenly the guide shouts: humpback whales at 9! All of us look to the left side of the boat. And yes, it is there – but not only one whale - no - 4 humpback whales at a time! They are playful, surfacing and disappearing again and again. Once you see the back with the dorsal fin, then soon after the fluke. They seem to enjoy the company of the boat and play hide and seek with us. At some point we loose their sight as they leave for a dive, but then suddenly they are surfacing and blowing again. The show we get and the excitement is difficult to explain.
Adult humpback whales reach a length of 14 to 16 meters. It is estimated that the world population of humpback whales is about 80 thousand individuals.
Happy to have seen the four humpbacks for a while Sandra informs us that it is time to head on. Everyone enjoyed the show we got. Now we have a fantastic and huge blue whale in front of us. We would never have imagined seeing it that close, surfacing maybe twenty meters away from us. The whale is huge, surely measuring more than twenty meters in length.
Our heart starts to beat stronger. The whale watching has been a great success anyways, but the sightng of the blue whale has been the icing on the cake.
After two hours and a half it's time to return to port. With sadness we say goodbye to the four humpbacks and the blue whales. No doubt that the whale watching will be one of the greatest memories we take with us from Iceland."
You will find the original article and more photos here: http://milviatges.com/2015/avistamiento-ballenas-islandia-husavik
- Sarah
PHOTOS: Jordi Martínez
A humpback whale surfacing near our boats Faldur and Sylvía (background).
A blue whale and excited passengers on Sylvía in the background.
Four humpbacks were swimming in the same area. Here two of them are surfacing next to each other.
The blue whale's blow can raise up to 8 metres into the air.
Oak boat Faldur ready to leave for another exciting whale watching trip.
