Pilot Whale
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Surrounding Wildlife – 6/25
The past few days have been filled with excellent whale sightings, mainly with orcas and pilot whales. We have seen many young calves, both with the orcas and the pilot whales. One day, when we were out, we saw the orcas and the pilot whales quite close to each other, within 1 nautical mile. They…
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Midnight Sun – 6/25
Now, we are in the middle of the Midnight Sun period here in Northern Norway. This natural phenomenon means that the sun does not go below the horizon during the summer months above the Arctic Circle. During our midnight cruise, we can see wildlife under the Midnight Sun. Over the past few days, we have…
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First Summer Tour of 2025 – 2/6/25
We had our very first summer whale-watching trip from Bleik, Andøya, today, and it was a blast. First, we encountered a large group of long-finned pilot whales. They were traveling slowly with short breaks to socialize. We have also seen young calves with the group. The pilot whales were quite curious; they were spy-hopping next…
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Pilot Whales and Orcas – 10/2/25
With low winds and a sunny day ahead of us, we were excited to see what the day was to hold and what a fantastic day on the water it turned out to be! As we approached the hotspot deckhand, Luke, was up on the roof, calling pilot whales ahead, and we spotted a massive…
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An Interesting Pilot Whale Encounter – 12/24
We had an interesting encounter, actually at a stranding in December last year and in a pod of Pilot Whales. You get individual personalities and some express themselves more than others. And we were during the stage of the refloat. So just rewind, set the scene slightly. So, we’ve got 19 pilot whales that had stranded as part of a larger pod. Ssome individuals sadly hadn’t made it, but the tides hadstarting to come in and what we do is we refloat pilot whales all at the same time on an incoming tide because they are heavy, and they are hard to handle out of the water because they are quite delicate, despite being heavy. And so, we use their natural buoyancy to aid them with that. Plus, the tight social bonds that led them to strand as a pod, we use them as an advantage to refloat them together the same time. And so I’m usually in an oversight role. I’m usually looking at people and their behaviours, looking at the whales and see if there’s any needs that need to be met in the moment. Well, as I’d helped refloat one whale, which was off to one side of the pod, bring it into the bigger group. As I’ve released control of that whale, I’ve moved to a group of four people who had a larger whale who was doing a lot of thrashing, showing signs of stress. So, lifting the towel and it’s still on its belly at this moment with about water halfway up its body, so it’s feeling the urge to swim, but it can’t yet swim. And there’s four people and they’re really struggling to hold this whale in place as it’s thrashing. So, I’ve come up to the whale and, I’ve asked the four people, you can just stand off, and we’ll let the whale calm down. And so, 20 seconds or so, the whale rolled onto its side, and it did slow down and it’s thrashing. So, then I’ve reached in and I’ve just rolled it back up onto its belly and it took calm breath and the thrashing past. So, I’ve said to the four people, I’ve said, hey, that’s great. I can look after this whale if you want to. Please distribute yourselves amongst these other whales as this tide’s coming in. Well, about 20 minutes later, one guy who had been with the whale, when it was thrashing, he’s walked past and he said, can I help you with that? Because there’s me on my knees at the side of this whale, that’s like five meters long. It’s huge. The tide is still coming in and he’s like can I come on the other side and help you hold it in place? And I said, yeah, sure, come on in. So, he’s coming in and he’s opposite me. We’re in the middle of the whale by its dorsal fin, on our knees, facing each other. And within 20 seconds, this whale starts thrashing its tail, lifting its head, arching its head. And I said, all right, let’s stand off. And I’ve looked at him, he’s looked at me and I’ve said, I’m really sorry, I don’t think this whale likes you. And he looked at me and he looked crestfallen. He really was like, what?? And I’m like, look, it is a thing. They have personalities. They do, they get a vibe off of people. And I say, I don’t know whether it’s maybe something you’re wearing or whether it is, you know, just a vibe. And while you can’t measure vibes scientifically, genuinely this guy stepped away, this whale calmed down. So when we say they have different personalities, just go to the dog park and look at the different personalities,, in dogs there. And it’s very similar with whales. We could have 50 whales on the beach and there’ll be three or four that just won’t settle. They maybe just don’t want people around them. Others, they’re fine. They associate our actions with meeting their immediate needs and they come right down. But some whales they simply just won’t settle. They don’t like the environment, they don’t like the people, they don’t like our vibe You know, like I say, it’s not measurable in any kind of scientific way, but it is something that definitely happens at a stranding and no doubt it happens in a in a pod of whales as well. -Daren This post was adapted from a voice recording in episode 77 of the Whale Tales Podcast, listen here.