Ferry Trip

The ideal ways to monitor whales is from small manoeuvrable boats but this is not always possible, especially in the kind of weather we have seen this week.

There is a car ferry that runs several times a day to Grynnfjord across a channel that is over 300m deep. This is not really deep enough for sperm whales, but does attract other species such as killer whales and humpbacks. In a southerly blow the route is sheltered by Andoya and so it is possible to look for whales away from the exposed, deep-water canyon.

The ferry provides a high, stable platform to work from but will not diverge from its course to see whales so that they can be photographed for identification purposes. What you can do is make a transect, which is a standardised sampling technique for a repeatable route over a fixed time, using the same amount of observer effort each time.

Our job was for two observers at a time to scan the sea to the horizon on either side of the ship. Any sightings are recorded on a digital voice recorder so that we can transcribe them later onto a spreadsheet.

The ferry company is very co-operative and they allow the watchers to be on the ship's bridge for the duration of the voyage once we have left harbour. They also allow us free passage. The skipper and first mate were friendly and we were really comfortable inside the wheel-house, though spray made viewing difficult.

We did not see any whales, but we found a small school of porpoises as we entered the fjord.

For me, being in the wheelhouse and seeing the craggy Norwegian mountains approach was a good enough reason to be out there. I also managed to see quite a few seabirds including gannets, puffins, black guillemots, razorbills, fulmars, and kittiwakes, but the highlight for me was to watch arctic skuas robbing the kittiwakes of their fish. A great skua flew past  in a straight flight, just passing through.

I had been told to look out for white-tailed eagles in the fjord, but I saw none. never mind; we will be back, especially if we get more rough days.

Unfortunately, Monday was even rougher than Sunday, with gale force winds so that even the ferry was cancelled. This was a day for data entry.