By Ellie Young

FIeld season has well and truly kicked off and unbelievably we are almost 2 weeks into the field season, in the westfjords back in our beloved cabin. Here is a little recap on what has happened so far. 

Tom and Alyssa started the field season a little differently this year spending 2 weeks in the eastfjords for the whales of Finnafjörður project. Getting there was quite the adventure with some car issues in our beloved yellow van Savannah, the team got there 2 weeks later than expected with Tom getting stuck in Germany with a broken down van. Luckily fellow whale wise member Johanna was nearby and Tom managed to get the van in tip top condition to continue to Iceland. Despite the van issues the team still had a successful stint in the east scouting land based sites and making great contacts to continue our research there.

Next up was the Ocean Film Festival in Húsavík where the rest of the team met up. It was a great few days and with a really interesting range of films from adventure documentaries through Iceland’s rivers, to the weird and wonderful world of deep sea creatures. It was great to see so many people interested in learning more about our oceans and having engaging discussions after the movies, giving us all food for thought.

Once the film festival was over, Tom, Alyssa, Katie, Flo and I said our goodbyes to Húsavík and started the long drive to the Westfjords to Drangsnes, our home base for the field season to continue our Scars from Above project . On the way we had an amazing encounter with 3 humpback whales feeding very close to land. Many people had stopped at the side of the road to see these magnificent whales from their cars. Unfortunately, the weather wasn’t quite good enough for us to be able to drone so we said goodbye to the whales and continued our journey. Once we arrived at the cabin, we then had the mammoth task of unpacking the van and sorting all of the research equipment.  

The first week in the cabin was a bit of a whirlwind. We had pretty mixed weather which wasn’t the best for droning. Very excitingly, local whale watching guide Judith from Laki Tours messaged us that there was a blue whale in the fjord so the team very quickly and excitedly got in the van to see it from land. It was quite far away but we were able to hear the blows from the whale and see it swimming through the fjord. A very rare sight here in Drangsnes.

The next day we had a big driving day to Ísafjörður to meet up with masters students Ben and Laura whilst droning where we could along the way. After leaving at 6am we were all pretty exhausted when we finally headed toward Drangsnes at 10pm, however, the day did not stop there as we saw some Killer Whales!! Another rare sighting in this fjord and to see them one day after seeing a blue whale was pretty crazy. We spent another 2 hours watching the pod, going incredibly far into the fjord, passing a feeding humpback along the way. There were 2 big males in the pod and it was incredibly exciting to see them. Even from land you can really appreciate the size of the male’s dorsal fin towering above the water. Finally at midnight the team was well and truly exhausted and headed to bed after an exciting couple of days.

Then it was time to head down to Reykjavik as Tom and Alyssa joined the National Geographic Lindblad ship, as visiting scientists to continue our research. We had a couple of hours to enjoy Reykjavik which mainly meant having good food and coffee (see Katie’s excitement after our bakery stop below). Sadly this also meant saying goodbye to Alyssa as she will be heading back to the US, and coming back later in the season.

That left the cabin team, Flo, Katie and I to continue our droning in Drangsnes. We have already managed to get aerial images of 12 whales, but unfortunately the weather hasn’t been the best and right now we’re in the middle of a storm which is going to last a few more days. We have been filling our days with yoga, computer work, celebrating Flo’s birthday and some nice walks. We even found a rather adorable baby duck on our last walk which thought that I was its parent for a while. So I guess I’m a bird mom now.