Day At Sea, Evening at Prins Karls Forland
On any other day, spotting a Fin Whale would be spectacular. The Fin is the second largest whale in the world, and it is the chance of a lifetime to see such a magnificent animal. But is it possible to see so many of these that you get “Finned” out? Well, not quite. But we did see so many Fin whales today, that we sure did lose count. What’s more, despite the magnificence of these giant behemoths, their sightings came in second place, today. To Blue Whales. Three of them!
This morning, the National Geographic Explorer sailed to the “Drop Off” west of Spitsbergen with the hopes of sighting some whales. The “Drop Off” is a ledge some 15 miles off shore where the depth of the ocean suddenly plummets from 600’ to almost 18,000’ deep. Here, remnants of a northbound warm water current mixes with a cold water sub-current to cause an upwelling of nutrients. This upwelling forms phytoplankton blooms and provides a large food basis for sea animals to feed on. Thus, it’s a perfect place to look for the big guys.
The seas were placid calm, and the morning’s fog disappeared conveniently after breakfast to offer ideal whale sighting conditions. It wasn’t long before our first sighting was in fact two blue whales. The captain tactfully positioned the ship towards one of the Blue’s where we could see an interesting white marking on its dorsal fin and two red stripes (scars?) upon its mottled blue skin. This Blue wasn’t terribly big – perhaps 60 feet long - but still huge!
As we began to head back East to the mainland, blows from Fin Whales were popping up everywhere and we stopped to watch a few of them along the way.
And then came the daddy of them all – a fully grown, gigantic Blue whale of at least 90 feet in length. As we drew closer, this beautiful whale would rise to the surface with a terrific blow from its spout, followed by a never-ending arc of its mottled blue-grey back. Its gigantic tail would leave a massive footprint on the water before it would disappear, only to rise again a few minutes later to the “oohs” and “ahhs” of everyone onboard. It was a real treat to share the same corner of the ocean with these majestic animals for a morning.
After rolling our way back towards the Svalbard Archipelago, we had a terrific Captain’s Farewell dinner. But in true Lindblad Expeditions form, we couldn’t let ourselves say farewell to this beautiful land without one final outing. After dinner, we dropped anchor by the east coast of the island called Prince Karls Forland. Here, we landed on a beach called Poolepynten to see a snug, quiet congregation of walruses hauled out on the sandy point. The sun was bright, the winds were calm, and the mountainous scenery offered a serene evening finale to our expedition in the high Arctic.
