Feeding Humpback Whale (Big Mouth) - Andfjorden, Norway – Bjørn-Erik Thorud

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The past few years millions of herrings have entered Andfjorden just outside the island of Andøya in Northern Norway. And with them, also large numbers of whales has come to feed on the herring. This photo is taken from a RIB (rigid-inflatable boat) just a few hundred meters from land. Since it’s the middle of the winter, the light isn’t too good, but a few hours of sunlight was enough. This enormous humpback breached the surface a mere 10-15 meters from the boat, giving me a really nice close up.

In the background you can see the island I live on where you can go out whale watching both summer and winter. During the summer season you go out with a bigger boat to see the sperm whales right on the edge where they dive down really deep. During the winter you can see these huge humpbacks, killer whales, sperm whales and fin whales much close to land.

On this trip we saw all of the above except from the sperm whales. The conditions wer as I said not the best because of the light or rather lack of it, and the fact that the RIB isn’t a large vessel so the waves didn’t help much in keeping the camera still.

Camera: Nikon D800

Lens: Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8

Shutter speed: 1/250 sec

Aperture: f7.1

ISO: 1600

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