Killers

"Reine"

Our last day on Andøya was to be our best, which is the way we would want it, given the choice. It was the only really calm day of the week and the air veritably stank of whales, at least to me it did.

The plan was to maximise our observation effort using the tower, the ferry, the fast catamaran "Dolphin" and the slow-but-sure ex-whaleboat "Reine". Both the deep sea "Canyon" and the shallower "Fjord" were covered, but the boats had the most success in the canyon.

"Dolphin"

"Reine" acted as our spotter and stayed out whale-seeking all day while "Dolphin" made two trips with about 80 tourists at a time. I was lucky enough to be on "Dolphin" both times as we came alongside "Reine" to see the whale or whales that she had found.  This meant that our whole team got to encounter two new sperm-whales that had not been catalogued before.  They were both young males, grey coloured with no obvious markings, but as we saw them "flukes-up" one of them had already had a small bite taken from his tail.

On our second trip of the day we approached what we thought was to be one of the two whales from the morning, but it was a humpback. It didn't stay on the surface long and moved at some speed in a series of shallow dives. I don't think we got any pictures of it before the skipper spotted a pod of smaller whales that, at long range, he mistakenly took to be pilot whales. (At that point us whale-spotters  couldn't see anything at all.) We slowly edged up to them and saw that the unit consisted of a calf protected by two females and a patrolling male arcing around them at a distance of about 500 m. This was the first sighting of killer whales for some weeks, and it got better.

Young sperm whale.
Note the bite on the left side.

The female orcas were not bothered by the boat. and they swam by us for a long time. The male showed some displeasure by beating his tail on the surface and he kept his distance at first, but soon he settled down. We slowly became aware that other orcas were joining our pod until we estimated over 20 individuals were visible at once.

We enjoyed an hour with the killer whales and found ourselves over 22 Km away from the lighthouse. We then turned for home, hoping to pick up another whale on the way back or in the Fjord but the weather was turning against us  with rain showers, poor visibility and a rising wind.

Male killer whale.

Another male.

To be honest, even with the reward of a lifetime experience like this, five or six hours of constant vigilance is enough for me. We are supposed to take 20 minute watches but I can't switch off when I am relieved in case I miss something. I had every confidence that the crew or my colleagues would spot any whales that came a long, but the birds were another matter.

I think I made two interesting discoveries that day:

I had previously noticed that fulmars and gulls tracked the "Reine" and that when she stopped to listen for whales on the hydrophones more birds would move in to form a flotilla on the water. They obviously associated the ship with food, especially when it stopped moving. "Reine" is a traditional whaling boat and looks like a fishing vessel, so I assume that the birds think we have stopped to haul nets. My new observation was that they don't do this with Dolphin because she is too fast and does not behave or look anything like a fishing boat. Birds did not show much interest in the car-ferry either.

Females with a calf.

When we saw a sperm whale on the surface, it did not seem to have any birds associated with it, but the killer whales certainly did. I assume that hanging about for an hour waiting for a sperm whale to surface is not very productive for the birds, especially since the whale does not feed anywhere near the surface and any food scraps that emerge from the rear end of the whale tend to be indigestible keratinous beaks from squids that sink quickly.

"Killers" feed actively on the surface and produce quite a lot of tit-bits for the birds. This shows that long-lived seabirds like fulmars are very observant and can differentiate between different types of boats and of whales.

Around the killer whale-pods we saw a lot of fulmars, puffins and gulls and these birds were pestered by quite a lot of Arctic skuas. We did not see any shearwaters but Eleanor asked me about the tiny, swallow like bird that was flitting around below us which we identified as a Leach's petrel, which is a very small member of the shearwater tribe.