On Saturday morning my brother and I went for a paddle from Spread Eagle over into Chapel Arm. On our way back a minke whale surfaced about 30 feet in front of us. Wow! We were really excited. Then we realized we were paddling right over a school of capelin, and this guy was feeding. We were looking around for where he would come up next when all of a sudden SPLASH! He came out of the water right between us. I managed to snap this picture before he went under again.
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| Holy $hit!!!!! |
He came up on his side with his mouth open, you can see in the picture the white of his belly and lines under his open mouth. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life, and I’ve done a lot of paddling over the last 7 years. After that he turned around and started heading toward us on my side.
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| I see you under there |
In the above pic, you can see the foamy water on the left where he had just surfaced, and if you look in the water you can see the white of his right fin. He was heading right towards me, then started to come up. I was yelling “HES COMING UP HES COMING UP!!!!!” backpaddling as fast as I could. The water under the bow of my kayak started to get foamy, and I could have pushed off the whales head with my paddle, then he quickly went under again. Almost like he realized I was there at the last second then went under again.
Anyways,
after that we were both shaking with adrenaline. We got as close to the cliffs
as we could and watched him swimming around feeding for about 20 minutes before
he swam away.
Craziest
thing that ever happened to me, hands down!!
