Husavik – A Whale of a Good Time



Charming Husavik nestled at the base of a mountain smothered in lupines

Husavik is incredibly charming – colorful houses line the streets overlooking the beautiful Skjalfandi Bay, a glorious blue and purple mountain rises up behind the red and white church (it is truly blue and purple, not an atmospheric trick. The entire mountain and surrounding hills are cloaked in a dense blanket of Alaska lupines.), and snow capped peaks are just opposite the city on the other side of the bay.

Husavik also has a claim as the first settlement on Iceland, but this isn’t why anyone comes here. You come for the whales. Husavik is the whale watch capitol of Iceland. It is certainly why we are here. The town is also home to the Husavik Whale Museum, an incredible facility dedicated to all anyone has ever known about cetaceans. They have very informative displays for every major member of the whale family, a gallery dedicated to whale strandings, one on the history of commercial whaling, another for a profile of indigenous whale hunting, an echolocation section, another on the ocean food chain, and so on and so on and so on. We felt pretty knowledgeable on this subject, but were quickly brought to realize the depth of our own ignorance. Did you know whales extract 90% of the oxygen from the air they breathe? Did you know that the bowhead whale can live for more than 200 years? Did you know that some whales can stay under water for more than 2 hours? I could go on like this, but I won’t.




Orca skull at the Husavik Whale Museum



One of the more amazing features is the 2nd floor “whale walk”. This is a cat walk under the peak of the roof with actual whale skeletons suspended from the ceiling. All of the specimens came from whales stranded on Iceland’s shores. Most interesting to me was the sperm whale skeleton which came from an individual with almost no lower jaw. The autopsy showed that the lost jaw had not killed him. The wound was healed over and the whale had managed to catch enough food to live. We also gained a great deal of useful information on the processing and preparing of whale skeletons – it isn’t pretty and can take up to two years!

The staff was wonderfully knowledgeable and helpful. We got quite good at “fingerprinting” whales by their unique fluke patterns (humpbacks) and learned about “fin matching” technology as well. We felt well prepared for our whale watch.

We selected the four hour trip with the visit to Lundey Island. This is home to anywhere from 100,000 to 200,000 puffins. The island is private property, and the farmers who own it use it mainly to harvest eggs and hunt the puffins. The little island was indeed honeycombed with nests and awash in puffins. It was much easier to observe their marine activities from the boat than during yesterday’s cliff walks. They dive remarkably deep – up to 70 meters, and are completely hilarious to watch taking flight from the water. Puffins mate for life, with qualifications. Due to the uncertainty of life in such a harsh environment they can lose their partner, and then they will find a new one. However, if the original mate returns, the new one will be tossed out and the previous relationship renewed.



Thank you Fund for Teachers!



Our first hour at sea yielded no cetaceans and we were somewhat disappointed. Obviously, it’s not a zoo, and they are wild animals, but in our imagination the seas around Iceland were just seething with whales. Our fellow sailors (it was a beautiful oak hulled schooner) were mainly a split of Germans and Italians with one pair each or Austrians, Swiss and French to ease the soccer induced tension (Germany was playing Italy in the Euro semifinals today). The Italians turned out to be outstanding whale spotters and soon the air was full of cries, “Ecco la! Three o’clock! Ecco la! Eleven o’clock!”



After that first hour there were humpbacks galore and we discovered that whale identification is significantly easier with pictures than with actual whales. The whales were not terribly cooperative about raising their flukes at easy to see angles and we are in need of a camera upgrade as well. However, there were so many and so many good opportunities that we did get some nice pictures and some good video – there will be a delay on posting the whale video because the netbook doesn’t have video editing software and to catch a good whale dive there is a good bit of empty ocean and blow beforehand. It would take millennia to upload most of the video at this point. We did a couple posted, http://youtu.be/z5VBlfHb8vU  and http://youtu.be/D5-UyGASUS0  . The Slideshow is up however and here is the link. http://flic.kr/s/aHsjAiz52E . There were three whales feeding in this shallow (for a whale) area, so their dives didn’t last very long. We were able to use our fluke printing on these, so that was good. There was also abundant bird watching and hot chocolate spiced with rum (the captain poured with a very liberal hand) and cinnamon rolls. So all in all, despite the fact that we still can’t manage to see a Blue whale, an excellent day!