And, you can’t get off the ship and walk amongst the polar bears. Whales are a total crapshoot, and we’ll never in our lives match the glory of the Antarctic bubble feeding we saw. So, I was a little nervous. What if we didn’t see much of anything, other than the Svalbard reindeer we had already seen?
I had a checklist – polar bears, walruses, whales, seals, and reindeer. Well, a bit after leaving port, we got the annoucement that a blue whale had been spotted. Everyone rushed to one of four level of the front. There’s the actual bow (which tended to get a bit crowded), a small observation area just above the bow, the bridge, and the observation area above the bridge.
The bow was the best spot for being forward, while the bridge was the best place for both remaining warm/getting warm and for having the crew point out what we were observing. I ended up prefering the area above the bridge, because it never got crowded and afforded great viewing from on high.
We tracked the blue whale for a while. Blue whales are not the most photogenic of whales. Well, at least not this solitary one – it would surface to breathe, but was not feeding.
That's one of the few glimpses we
got of the blue whale. Our first
blue whale sighting ever.
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