The Whale

We were speeding through the water back to Illulisatt and were now in open water. We were all chatting, as you do, then all of a sudden the boat slowed down and we then heard the skipper had spotted a whale, so we grabbed our cameras.

In no time I saw it, we all did of course, then it disappeared. You would think it would submerge and reappear a bit further on, but that's not how it worked. The whale would dive but would then reappear at some completely random location nowhere near where you thought it would be. The whale was feeding, so when it dived it swam around finding food and then it would surface., which made it really hard to take photographs, but I must say that it was extremely exciting. At one point the whale surfaced only a few metres from our boat, so close you could smell it. On another occasion we watched it swim under our boat.

I got three photos on the phone but you'll need to look hard to see any detail. The short video is best but I sort of messed up at the end so missed the whale's tail rising out of the water. You can certainly hear the shutters clicking though. My phone photos aren't brilliant but at least they are a record of the event. I have much better photos taken on the big camera, not all that many but a lot better, so I'll show them to you after I get home.

Jeroen, one of our group leaders, got some great images using his drone. The last two photos are his. If you are on Instagram he is @jvn.photoEn savoir plus