As we were leaving the isolated sheep farm, we had high hopes for the day. Today is Whale Watch Day! I (Sarah) have never seen a humpback whale in person and my previous open water experience hadn’t gone so smoothly. Despite spending most of my life as a lake rat, the open waves of the ocean and my equilibrium just don’t get along! However, I pre-planned and had both meclizine and scopolamine ready for sea sickness! I was NOT going to get sick today. We left the volcanic fields and headed north west towards Husavik, with a side stop at Dettifoss, Iceland’s biggest waterfall.
As we pulled into the parking lot for Dettifoss we were happy to see only a few cars and just one bus. We geared up, (with a special touch for Ray’s gloves 😉 and headed towards the falls. The moonscape like terrain was both warm and golden with the morning sunlight and frigid and cold with ice crystals freezing from the mist of the falls.
We ventured to the falls, 1.5 Km small morning hike, and the air had a snappy bite to it that assured us fall was indeed here. The close and closer we got to the falls, I began to regret my tennis shoes and wish I had hiking boots. My shoes had zero traction and soon, every surface was covered in ice. I made the decision that the tiny rope barrier wasn’t enough to keep me from going over the falls, so I turned back and headed towards the car, which ended up being good because we underestimated how long we had been there! We had the ONLY hard set time appointment on the trip… a date with Friends of Moby Dick.
We took off for the sound and it wasn’t long and a chorus of gasps ran through the boat and Mata pointed out our first whale sighting. This whale is known to the guides as “Polly” or “Paulie” though they don’t know if the whale is a male or female. I choose to call it a “her” for the purpose of the blog. Polly surfaced and dove for us many times. This is when I learned my first whale of a lesson…. It’s really hard to photograph whales on a boat! I brought my medium range lens because I wasn’t sure how far or close we would be, and it’s the easiest to focus. However, I ended up extending it to max telephoto range, and switching it to full manual, with no auto focus because in the time the camera tried to auto focus, I’d miss my shot. I got a few fin pics, many back pics but no breach shots. It turns out that the big “commercial” breech whales do is a method of long range communication, and they would not likely do it this time of year or in this sound, as they don’t need to shout at each other here.
We moved on and through the two hours in the sound we saw 4 different whales. They indeed are majestic and this will not be my last whale tour. I look forward to the day when I can see even more.
