A RETURNING VISITOR
Do you remember our recent story about the bearded seal exploring Skjálfandi Bay and approaching our boats?
It seems our curious visitor and boat inspector has decided that a visit to the bay wasn’t complete without passing by Húsavík harbour as well!
Naturally, it didn’t take long for word to spread: What started as a quiet harbour visit quickly became a small local event, with people from all around town coming down to the water in the hope of catching a glimpse of our unexpected guest.
Bearded seals are usually associated with Arctic waters, sea ice and remote coastal environments, so seeing one calmly resting in the middle of the harbour is certainly not an everyday sight — although it has happened on and off over the past few years.
When we first encountered it, the seal seemed particularly curious about our boats, repeatedly approaching and inspecting them out in the bay. Young bearded seals are naturally inquisitive animals, and this individual has certainly lived up to that reputation.
Now, instead of investigating boats during whale watching, it has been spending time right in the heart of town, swimming back and forth between the piers, leaping out of the water, splashing, or resting on a floating platform tied up between some of the boats.
For us, this is yet another example of how the wildlife of Skjálfandi Bay is never quite predictable: We might spend much of our time looking out across the bay for whales, dolphins and seabirds, but some of the most memorable and rare encounters happen somewhere completely unexpected.
A note on our returning visitor: While it seems quite likely that the bearded seal seen in Húsavík harbour is the same individual we encountered earlier in Skjálfandi Bay, we cannot know this for certain without a reliable way of confirming its identity.
Either way, it has definitely made for a memorable series of encounters and a story worth sharing.
Photos by Sarah Arndt (captain/head guide)
