Norway 14-17 December 2007

We flew from London to Oslo then connected to a flight to Harsted, about 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle. Owing to a delay in getting the aircrew for the second flight we arrived too late for the last ferry via Lodingen and so had to go the longer route round via Narvik for a later ferry. On the way to Narvik, the rep from Explore informed us that although the brochure suggested that we would see plenty of killer whales, in fact, this season the success rate was only about 40% of trips saw whales. This was because the herring, which the whale follow into the fjords, were changing their migratory pattern and no onger coming to the area in anything like the numbers in previous years. At a talk by the scientist leading the study at Tysfjord, the following morning we learned that this was to be expected as the migration patterns change every 20 years or so and the herring had been coming to Tysfjord since 1987.

On Saturday we set off about 10am. It was still dark. We spent the day on a converted trawler. The weather was overcast and windy. No other boats were out so there wasn't even the chance of picking up on other people's sightings. We saw nothing. We returned ashore about 2pm, by which time it was dark already. There was nothing to do, so we were cooped up till dinner time. No wonder Norwegians turn to alcohol, in spite of the price (about £8 a pint of beer and wine is even more expensive) and heavy metal.


On Sunday we were kitted out in dry suits and went out on RIBs. It was raining. We saw no whales, again, though we did see a sea eagle in the distance. We had a swm in the fjord to prove our dry suits were working then returned ashore before darkness fell at about 2.30pm.

On Monday, we set off by coach and caught the ferry to Lodingen and back to the airport for our flight home via Oslo. We felt the whole experience had been pretty miserable and that Explore had misled us in their brochure about the prospects of seeing whales.

The whale tours were run from the Tysfjord Tourist Centre:
http://www.tysfjord-turistsenter.no/safari/english/