Our season in the Westfjords, Iceland has started wonderfully, with five or six humpbacks hanging around very close to town feeding. They are probably feeding on krill here at this time of year, but it could also be small fish such as sand eels also.
One of the whales, known here as Dash-Dot (also known as Celt or HRC-MN608), who has a very beautiful pattern on the underside of its tail, has been seen here almost every season since we started this whale watch in 2017. The joy of whale watch with us is that we are the only boat with the whales, something that is very hard to find now with humpback whales anywhere in the world.
On this day Dash-Dot all of a sudden because very active, treating us to about 15 breaches as well as pec-slapping.
As usual it is impossible to say for sure why this whale suddenly became surface active, but one of the main theories is some form of communication between individuals. After the whale stopped its first set of breaches it briefly joined up with another humpback, known here as ‘Vampire’. They travelled for a very short time together and then split up and Dash-Dot once again started breaching.
As we were leaving these whales another humpback started breaching also ahead of us, so these lucky passengers were treated to two humpback whales repeatedly breaching. What a lucky bunch!
-Judith
Leave a Reply