So we’ve been studying whales in Iceland now for quite a few years. And we’re mainly based in the Westfjords, so that’s where I am right now. It’s a very remote corner of Iceland in the far northwest. And typically our field seasons have mostly been summer and sort of early fall, so generally somewhere from July to October. But now Alyssa, my partner and I, we run Whale Wise together and we live in here full time at the moment, which means that we can study whales at all times of year and continue to ignore other responsibilities. So it’s just loads of fun.
And so we, in 2025, we’re basically sampling and doing our research throughout the year. Our research mostly entails watching whales from land, and so we do sighting surveys and then we also use drones a lot. So basically, in this part of Iceland, you have lots of long, narrow fjords. They’re quite deep, up to a couple of hundred meters deep. And this is where whales will, come in to feed, nearly always humpback whales, but we do get a few Minkes and now and again Orcas and Blue whales. But really in autumn, the focus was on Humpback whales.
And we had a bit of a suspicion that the peak was outside of the field seasons that we’d run so far. But Iceland makes things challenging later in the year because you have, large amounts of darkness. So in November, sunrise is between like, 10:30 and 11:30, which is a little bit intense. It takes a while to get used to. And then the weather’s super bad as well. So it’s usually very windy, which isn’t ideal if you’re trying to fly a drone and if you’re trying to get aerial images and especially trying to get fluke shots. And it was often snowing or the roads were just sheet ice. And I’m from the UK, so I’m not really used to driving on ice in very remote roads that don’t have tarmac.
So for that reason, we hadn’t really dedicated our resources to specific field seasons going later into the year. But since Alyssa and I were living here, we thought, okay, we are going to continue to feed our obsessions and we’re going to watch whales as much as we could. And we were mostly focused on this one fjord system called Isafjordur, which is a bit of a mouthful, but it’s the largest fjord, fjord system in the Westfjords. And so we knew from, research earlier in the year in September and October that the whales were really picking up. And we thought, okay, we’re going to try and collect data in November.
And we had this crazy trip earlier in the year in October, we went out with a whale watching company. So in summer, I also work as a whale watching guide. And they took us out like a free research trip, which was really nice. They’re really cool. And we, ID’d 60 humpback whales in the fjord. And we were like, that is completely insane.
And so we thought, okay, well, we’re not going to, you know, beat those numbers from land or whatever, but we’ll give it a go. And I think on two days in November, we got more than 60 whales flying, a drone.
And we’re still crunching the final numbers. And so Alyssa’s going through all of the drone videos and extracting all of the flukes, which sometimes pretty rubbish because they’re just fluking in the distance. And a drone, it doesn’t give you the same resolution as a really good DSLR, but I’m pretty sure we have over 100 humpbacks, in November.
And I think they were pretty much all there at the same time. It was absolutely mental. Just wherever you looked, there were blows. And they were in often in quite concentrated areas. And the groups weren’t that big. I think the biggest foraging group we saw was like seven or eight animals, but all of them so close together. It was so condensed.
And often there are a couple of islands in this fjord system and they were often going into the sort of narrow channels between the islands and the mainland. It was just absolutely mad. And it was often quite frustrating waiting for the sun to rise. But then when it did, you basically had your sort of pink sunrise, sunset light for the entire day, just because the sun always stayed really low. The blows were just lit up in the most ridiculous ways.
And what was super interesting was obviously we had huge numbers of whales, but the good majority of them were whales that we’d been seeing throughout summer and autumn earlier in the year. So what we’re starting to realize about this area is even though it’s like a small sort of foraging hot spot within the larger feeding ground of Iceland, they actually have really high residency rates there.
We were seeing whales there that we’d seen. There was one called HRC-MN994 “Valentine”. Valentine’s one of my favorite whales, which we’d seen every month since February. There were whales that we’d been seeing basically every month since April, May, June, and they were staying through November. And we managed to get some IDs in December as well. And it was still pretty much the same ones that were there. And then you had some new ones coming in. We use HappyWhale a lot, and there were a few that were new to HappyWhale, which was really exciting.
And then also, interestingly, there were a few sort of regulars that we’d been missing from previous years. So one of the best known whales, it’s called HRC-Mn1391 “Snowflake”. And Snowflake is really distinctive. They’ve got a pretty white fluke and then they have the left tip missing, which is quite unusual around here. And Snowflake had been coming every year since 2018 or 19, which is kind of as far back as any regular data go for this area. So it’s all still pretty new, what we’re finding out. And Snowflake was basically there all the time in the previous years, and then in 2025, so Snowflake was completely absent. And we were like, oh, no, Snowflake’s moving on. What’s happened to Snowflake? We weren’t sure. And so we didn’t see Snowflake during the whale watching trips. But then Snowflake came towards the end of November, which is really interesting.
And there were a few real regulars from previous years that weren’t then coming until November or December we don’t know why that is. We notice that there aren’t that many big, big whales around or fully grown adults. So it’s. I’m not sure if they’re, as they get older, maybe they’re shifting their timing to coming later on. But then the question is, what are they doing during summer? A few people, including us, think that some of the big ones might be going off to eastern Greenland and then, I don’t know, maybe popping in in the west fjords before heading back south.
But it was just absolutely crazy. And we also noticed their behaviour changing as well, which was really interesting. So they’re usually. When they’re feeding in Iceland, they’re pretty chilled. They’ll be deep feeding. They’ll dive for, like, five to eight minutes, come up, take several breaths. It’s really beautiful. And then they’ll fluke down again.
But they were also getting a lot more rowdy, which was really cool. So I’m guessing the breeding season hormones were kicking in and there was a mother calf pair that came in, which is really rare for that area. It was the first confirmed mother calf of the whole year. We don’t know where the mother calf pairs go. We’re just fairly clueless at the moment. And this mother, came in called ISAMN025 “Teardrop” and came in with her calf, who we decided to name Droplet. And it was interesting how Teardrop came in and was just kind of harassed by several of the whales. And it was something we’ve never really seen before, that they were very clearly chasing after her. And it was the sort of, like, I don’t know, possible, breeding behaviour that we just don’t see earlier in the year. So, yeah, it was just really magical.
The craziest thing about it was we were out there for several days in November. We did get lucky with the weather, to be honest. We had some good days where it was. It was pretty calm and just like the most ridiculous scenes. And never once did we have or see anyone else watching the whales. It was just Alyssa and I. In the middle of nowhere. There are a couple of towns nearby, but still. So a couple of hours drive and then houses dotted around. But yeah, it was just complete solitude. And then 100 whales.
So throughout November and then early December, we kind of descended into going out in worse and worse conditions, because it would start where we’d be like, okay, we can only really do this when it’s, like, really calm. You know, the whales are still a couple of kilometers away. Good lighting and good conditions to fly the drone. Okay, perfect. We go out on those conditions and then we’re like, we know there are loads of whales and the weather’s not looking great. It’s a bit windy. We don’t know whether to go, but we’ll go just in case. And then we go. And then we can actually just photograph some with our DSLR from land. We’re like, okay. And then by the end of December, we’re going in conditions where the roads are really icy and muddy, and we’re like, oh, we need to kind of be careful.
And then it’s so windy that you can literally barely stand. But the whales were so close to land and in such numbers that by holding each other still while the other person had the camera, we’re actually able to take photos of the whales. So we kind of, there was sort of this, like, positive reinforcement of being like, we can actually get worse and worse conditions. It’s probably a bit irresponsible and get really usable data. So, yeah, there’s a lot of fun.
-Tom
Listen to this encounter from Tom on our Patreon at the $1/month level.
Read the WhaleWise blog about their time in the field in the fall of 2025.
All media: Tom Grove, Whale Wise
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