Dead Whale

Thursday:

This morning the weather is better but no whales have been spotted so far. We spent the morning waiting for a call from the search vessel, but no news yet.........

To keep us amused, a dead-whale safari was organised by car to a beach beyond the village of Bleik. It is only 15 minutes away beyond the jagged "Seven Sisters" so it is quite a scenic drive through mountains and moors, past dwarf forests and hill-tarns. We looked hard for reindeer but saw none.

We saw pretty lake-side cabins and learned that these were the private week-end retreats for the people of Andennes, ten minutes away. I didn't meet any of the local householders, but it looked to me like they had their life-style pretty well sorted out. The other interesting man-made feature was a number of wooden outdoor hot tubs, built into mounds with fire places beneath. I definitely want one at home.

You might not think it would be hard to find a dead whale, but we missed it on the first pass. It is largely covered with sand and so it has blended into the beach. However, finding a dead whale from downwind is just as easy as you would imagine.

The corpse was of a quite large male sperm whale that was stranded here last autumn. Sadly the lower jaw, which had the teeth, had been removed but otherwise it was quite intact.

This dead whale looked even more like a frankfurter than the living Miø did on my first encounter. It appeared to be swimming along the beach, half submerged in sand.

I went to push his nose with my boot but Iva abruptly pulled me away saying that if I did, my boots would not be allowed in the car. The smell is very hard to get rid of.

I lifted a large, bleached bone from the whale's upper jaw. It was very heavy, even for a bone. Whales need to be heavy to sink themselves, but imagine the effect of extreme pressure on any bone that had air trapped within it. Whalebones are not just dense, they are soaked in oil which may prevent air from being trapped in or between them.

We had to return our borrowed car to the Whale-safari team, so we could not stay long, but I loved the drive back to the lighthouse. We passed through the village of Bleik which has strips of hay meadows running back to the base of the steep cliffs that back the bay. I was sure there would be corncrakes in there because they looked just like those I had seen in the Hebrides; full of meadow-sweet and Geraniums.

My eyes were glued to the windows of the car as I searched for reindeer and elk in the distance. I only found sheep, but vowed to come back later in the week, which we did.

12 hour whale hunt.

The Guides

Tuesday was a rough day, but it was possible to go out and search for whales. We covered the ferry and one of the whale-safari boats in the morning and then, as soon as we were ashore for lunch we were off again for an afternoon safari aboard the "Reine" that turned into a marathon.

We found a wale on the hydrophones which was probably the one known as Moby Dick. He was way off to the north and we lost him, so we then turned south for another whale which we did not make visual contact with until around 10 pm. By this time we were 34 Km off shore.

Every time the boat stopped, seabirds would gather around us thinking that we were a fishing boat about to haul in our nets. This was a good opportunity to photograph fulmars especially.

Miø

The new whale (my first ever sperm whale) blew ahead of us and we approached it quietly and slowly from behind, giving everyone a good opportunity to watch and take pictures. It stayed on the surface for over ten minutes before gliding forward, exhaling and then sounding into the deep canyon below.

Standard procedure is to stay on-station for roughly 40 minutes until the whale surfaces again. In deep water like this (over 2Km deep) the dive is vertical down and then up again, so we expected the whale to be nearby. During it's descent a sperm whale emits loud sonar clicks, but on the way up they go silent for the last five minutes, so we know roughly when to expect them. Our whale stayed down for 1 hour and 10 minutes, so we had a long, long wait, bobbing around on the rough sea and being sick.

Midnight sun.

Sure enough, the whale appeared again and we knew that we had about 15 minutes to watch it's regular breathing and take the photos needed to identify it.

I could not resist calling this whale Wienerpølse which is the Norwegian for frankfurter. (Hot-dogs seem to be the Norwegian national dish these days, especially in airports and on ferrys.) The whale just looked like a big sausage lying on the surface of the sea. Not only that; it was a sort of browny pink with cream blotches. I spent ages fiddling with my photos to make them grey before I learned that sperm whales come in lots of shades from brown through pale blue/grey to almost black. They also come in plain white, as you know.

From the photos kept back on the computers in Andenes, it was easy to identify this whale as Miø.

Skipper

Throughout the long Arctic day the crew were always cheerful, encouraging and supportive while they tended the sick and fed the rest of us hot soup and crackers. In the great swell of the north Atlantic, at least half of the passengers were sick but most of them recovered on our way back to port under the midnight sun. We did not tie-up until 1 am.

As well as the strain of watching all day, first on the ferry and then the "Reine", we nursed aching hips, legs and backs from the constant adjustment to the motion of the ships while our shoulders and arms ached from holding on to ships' rails.  Whale-counting is physically punishing, but you have to work long days when the opportunity arises. You have all winter for data-entry.

Lighthouse and Ferry

Half way up the lighthouse.

The view from the top.

After we put in 12 hours at sea yesterday, so you might think that volunteers would merit a lie in? Nope!

Today we had groups out on the ferry, the lighthouse and the Whale-safari boat, but only managed to turn up a few porpoises. It was simply too windy to find the whales.

The lighthouse is a perfect platform to watch whales from, at least on calm days when you can see 22 Km to the horizon. But it is even better to watch bird migration. Even though we saw no whales I was content to see clouds of puffins, scoters, eiders, fulmars and kttiwakes.

On the ferry.

The ferry trip is always worth going on becasue the Fjord  is so spectacular. There is a resident pair of white-tailesd eagles there and a picturesque little town hugs the foot of vertical black cliffs, with a jagged horizon all round. Alpine snow fields reflect the glare of the sun even on dull days, giving the landscape an eeirie, empty feel despite it's majesty. On clear days we could look north beyond the neighbourhood to Måsvaer on the extreme Nortn West corner of Norway.

To make up for today's lack of whales, here is a video of Glenn the Sperm whale diving in the Fjord off Andenes on Friday 5th July 2013. GLENN

Data Entry

Today we have data entry. It sounds boring, but it's not dull when it's about sperm whales. It might be the nearest I ever get to one.

We worked in two groups:
One group transcribed the logs of whale sightings from the voice recorders into an Excel spreadsheet. A good observer can give alot of concise data in a brief message. We at least need the GPS location and time, the species seen and a description of the sighting, such as what the whale was doing. Using this data in the long, dark, Norwegian winter they will be able to plot the movements of whales in the Andenes area. Mostly they will be male sperm whales, but we transcribed records of porpoises and a minke whale.


The second group worked on the photographic library to organise pictures of sperm whale's flukes and dorsal fins. Currently there are over 30 individual whales active in the library, which is not too many to compare your shots with.

We also saw footage of an ideal day at Andenes, with good visibility, calm water and a lot of whales. You can see this on You-Tube at Whale Trip. It was taken in the winter when the sperm whales are joined by killer whales and humpbacks that seem to be following the herring.

I was told that, when the herring are in, the pubs fill with fishermen from Norway, Russia and Estonia. On the night we popped in, the only customer popped out as soon as he saw us!

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.

Museum

Sundays weather was too rough for the whale-watch boats so we had an extended visit to the whale museum.

We joined 80 people for the tour, which seems a lot. Normally, I would run a mile from such an event but we were soon split into smaller groups according to language.

Our guide Ronny was a model for any teacher. He used visual aids and clear, concise English to get across many aspects of sperm whale biology, making good use of the exhibits. It would not be nearly so useful to walk around on your own.

The most fascinating aspect of sperm whale biology is their adaptation to their unique lifestyle; in particular their sonar system which completely governs the front end of the animal. The skull is modified to become a loud-speaker and to support the huge sausage-like amplifier in front.

Group Photo

The group assembled for supper after a long day in boats, in training and up the lighthouse. This provided an opportunity for a group photo. Perhaps we will take another picture outdoors, when it stops raining.

Earthwatch/Whalewatch at Andenes, July 2013

This photo appeared along with an article in the local paper.