THE GUIDE'S STORY
Our guide Veronika is only one out of all the lucky people who have got to enjoy the world's biggest whales in combination with the wonderful weather during the last days. Veronika writes:
"Woooow - yesterday was a pretty speechless day for me, for sure!
I have been working for Gentle Giants for less than two months, but I am such a lucky person I have a hard time to describe it.
Not only that I get to be in the nature every day, enjoy sailing on this amazing bay and see the world's greatest, beautiful and exciting sea mammals. Today I've even got the chance to see many of the biggest animals which ever lived on this earth, all very close to each other. Especially the evening tour got me the most. When we, after leaving Puffin Island, headed towards west we spotted a biiiiig blow and then a biiiig body too. It belonged to what most probably is a hybrid of a blue- and a fin whale, which is unusual to see in this bay - and anywhere around the world!
Then we waited for it to come up several times after deep diving so we could have a closer look and while we were looking at this one, we spotted other blows in the distance. Huge blows! The captain and I looked at each other and we were like; ”Man, that must be blue whales!”. We got all very excited and told the passengers that we would go and check those whales out too, because they might also be pretty big ones.
While we were speeding up to try to catch up with the whales, suddenly another huge blow appeared at 3 o'clock on our right hand side. Captain Sverrir turned the boat towards it to try to see if we could get closer to that one, and guess what...? We could! We got very close to it a few times, took pictures and “woowed” some more, because it was a blue whale!
We left this beauty and focused again on the two other blows. Soon we reached yet another one which turned out to be another blue whale. We stayed with it also for a few dives, took pictures and got our mind blown away before we went to check out the fourth big blow, which was a third beautiful blue whale.
By this time I was personally completely speechless! This doesn't happen often in one's life. Even though I'm a guide I don't expect anything when I go for a tour, as this is wild nature. One can never know before what we will see, so I just always get surprises - which I really like!
After the three big blue whales and the hybrid blue-fin (?) whale, we went to check out two humpback whales which were feeding and they weren't shy either. They were checking us out many, many times and came very close to our boat with their mouths full and showing off their flukes. We also saw dolphins jumping not far from the boat.
What else can I say than Thank you God for giving me the eyes to see,the nose to smell and the ears to hear and everything what these beautiful creatures do around me/us. And thank you GG for this awesome job!"
- Text and photos: Veronika
Blue whale back, with our oak boat Sylvía in the background.
Humpback going down for a deep dive, seen from on board our RIB Amma Kibba.
