Written by Flordespina Dodds

For the last two field seasons in Iceland the Whale Wise team has spent time looking for and droning whales from land. One of our favorite land-based whale-watching places is Ísafjarðardjúp in the Westfjords. This area is a fjord system, with one large fjord and many smaller ones coming off it. There are often humpback whales in the narrow fjords and close to land in the largest fjord, but on many occasions the whales have been just a bit too far to reach with the drone. For our project Scars for Above, we can fly the drone up to about 5 km to find the whales and get aerial images and fluke photos. So, it has been frustrating that on some days in Ísafjarðardjúp the whales are just out of reach. That, in combination with needing good droning weather (no wind, no rain, sunny), can make it difficult to collect as many data as we would like in this area. So, when we were approached by Arvik Ocean it was a perfect opportunity for us.

Arvik Ocean is an organization committed to the protection of the ocean and marine life. With their sailing boat Migaloo, they aim to take concrete action at sea and on shore to inform and raise awareness about the impact of human activities on the marine environment. To learn more about them you can check them out HERE. Arvik approached us asking if they would be of any help with our project, and we said DEFFINETLY!

Four members of the Whale Wise team were able to join the boat at the end of July. You can read about the first shift with Tom and Alyssa in the previous blog post here. Following this, myself (Flo) and Petr joined the Arvik crew for 6 days; it was amazing to be out in the fjords that we had stared at for so many days during our previous field seasons.

DAY 1:  On the first day out with Arvik it was important for us to practice launching and catching the drone “Oscar” from the boat. All the sails, lines, waves and swell can make it difficult but with our safety gear on and guidance from the crew we did well and felt good about future flights. We sailed deeper into the main fjord and saw a couple humpbacks on the way; they were surface feeding which makes it difficult to get good aerial images because they don’t stay at the surface for a long time. We did manage to get two aerial images and flukes. We’ll be able to measure the size and body condition of the whales from the aerial images and we can use the flukes to identify the animals to see if we have seen them before. Using both of these we will then be able to look at entanglement scarring on the whales for our Scars from Above project. We anchored the boat in Skötufjörður – known as ‘whale fjord’ by the locals and the team for obvious reasons – and  spent the night there.

DAY 2: We woke up on the boat after a very calm night, and it stayed calm all morning. We sailed past Vigur Island where we saw one whale and got a great aerial and fluke. Along our path we also saw some porpoise and many birds including the iconic puffins. As we sailed past the headland we saw lots of blows in the distance, past the island of Æðey. On the way there we got another aerial image of a whale that swam along side us for a while. When we arrived at the big group of whales they were everywhere, there must have been 12-15 in the aera. We flew 2 flights and got many aerials but then the wind picked up so we couldn’t drone anymore. Then we sailed with the strong wind back to the town of Ísafjörður (Ísa).

DAYS 3 & 4: The weather on these days looked quite good in the forecast, but Iceland is unpredictable, and it ended up being quite windy. With white caps and swell we couldn’t drone these days, but we did see harbour porpoises and white beaked dolphins, and we took fluke and dorsal fin photos of a few humpbacks to use for identification.

DAY 5: We sailed out of Ísa and found ourselves in the middle of at least 20 humpback whales. It was nice to have the weather and the whales on the same page. We did many flights, and we believe that we got most of the aerial images and flukes. We drifted on the water and had lunch with the whales – it was so nice to be on a sailboat where you are not making any noise with an engine and the other boats seem so loud going past compared to our near silence. We even had some of the whales coming really close to the boat; it was an amazing day. Then we spent the night on board anchored near the island of Æðey.

DAY 6: The morning was so nice and calm – it was beautiful out on the water. We went really deep into the fjord, past the island of Borgarey, and we found 4 whales. We collected aerials and flukes of all of them and once again had lunch with the whales. After that the wind picked up and we went into Skötufjörður to anchor for the night. On the way we saw a few whales, but they were moving around quite a lot, so it was hard to keep track of how many there were, although we still photographed a few flukes. The next morning we were picked up by the other Whale Wise team members.

Our experience with Arvik was amazing – it gave us a unique opportunity to get out into the fjords and reach the whales we would never be able to reach from land with the drone. The Arvik team was so nice and a pleasure to work with (and they are great cooks!). They are so respectful of the whales when they steer the boat and try to use their sails as much as possible so that we didn’t have to use the noisy engine. We hope that our paths will cross again for another Arvik adventure.

Photo by Charly Puaud