Rainbow whale surprise

Antarctic Ocean

Can you guess which species this is? I want to know how many whale watchers there are here, post your answers in the comments! I’ll post in the comments later. Hint, it’s a species seen often in the Antarctic, and if you’ve watched whale wars you definitely would have seen them before!

After an uneventful sunset mother nature decided to prove to us she’s always got something hidden up her sleeves. This is where travelling workshops is such an exciting thing. We are winding down for the night, some people have gone to bed, nobody is really expecting anything to happen on a calm evening. But we always have people posted on the bridge, and when something breaks through the waters surface it’s such a thrill to get on the ships loudspeaker and exclaim “There are whales off the starboard bow!”. The calm lull around the ship turns into a feverish buzz as people scramble for their cameras and hurry for the nearest exit to the outer decks.

As the cool evening air washed over me I had never seen such a stimulating canvas of colours painted onto the reflections of the sea. This whale was gingerly swimming around the ship, somewhat curious of what we could be. Talk about a perfect end to an evening.

Photographic Details: It was extremely dim outside given that the sun had already set, so I had to let in as much light as possible with ISO 1600 with a relatively slow shutter speed of 1/400th of a second at f5. This was the best I could do on a moving ship hand held with a telephoto lens. I just kept shooting away while this whale was bobbing in and out of the water.