After our successful – but rather dark – whale safari last week, we were hungry for more! And we weren’t the only ones, so soon a plan was born: we rented a boat on Sunday. They were closed for the season, but still had 2 boats in the water and they kindly let us rent on of them. We went with my colleagues Gunnar, Trond and Nick. Sunday turned out to be a beautiful day, with very colourful skies…

The views towards Håja and Sommarøy were breathtaking and I wouldn’t have cared if we didn’t find any whales: the views alone were worth it 🙂

We found the whales soon after leaving Sommarøy though! Three of them started playing around the boat – at times they even touched the boat! It was awesome… a beautiful experience 🙂

Especially with the backdrops in that location…

At some point they got bored of us, and left to check out the boat of some fellow whale watchers. There were lots of people on the water that day 🙂

We drove around the fjord trying to find more whales, but they all seemed to be on their way out the fjord and we didn’t want to chase them too much.

At some point Trond noted herring flying up from the surface, and soon after two whale heads came up right next to the boat – WOW! So far we never saw their heads, just fins and tails. It was really impressive, but it happened so quickly that nobody got a good photo of it. We were in very shallow and clear water here, and to our amazement one of the whales swam right underneath the boat. We could see him very well in the clear water – for a moment I was afraid he would get stuck underneath the boat! Or, I guess he wouldn’t get stuck as I suppose they can easily move the boat – luckily this didn’t happen 😉

As the skies turned pink, the whales kept playing around other boats near us.

The light was getting dim though, so we decided to head back to Sommarøy. A huge flock of sea gulls flew overhead, hungry for herring I guess… a beautiful sight!

One last photo of the sunset, and the moonrise back in Sommarøy…

What a day! With our memories (both digital and natural) filled with the fantastic experience, we headed to the local cafe for some warm food. A perfect day 🙂 I also took some video footage with my SLR…

 

On the same day, some people I know were out in Grøtfjorden where the whales were having a feeding frenzy. Check out these fantastic photos – even more amazing when you know they were taken from a kayak! Not always without danger, as you can see in this crazy video, taken in the same area some days ago – luckily all went well.