Glacier Views lead to Swimming Belugas: Day 6 Part 3

6/22/2012 Friday

Holy cow!  After we left the bears, we moved further into Woodfjorden to view Monacobreen glacier (mapped by the Prince of Monaco 1906-7).  So beautiful, but its massiveness wasn’t apparent until the ship was right up next to it.  Magnificent in the way the light hit it.  I learned that the ice that appears blue in color is the most dense.  Over time, it has squeezed out air, making it more dense than the surrounding ice.  This causes it to absorb all colors of light except for blue, which is reflected.  

Before long, a message from the bridge stated that there were Belugas swimming in front of the glacier.  Sure enough, we were able to observe about 8 belugas swimming back and forth along the glacier.  This is just one more amazing event that I was privileged to witness and the setting, Beluga whales against a massive glacier, was idyllic.

The light hitting the glacier and the water was gorgeous.

You can see more of the blue, very dense, ice.

The two cream colored humps are Beluga Whales!!!

More of the pod of Belugas.

They never showed their heads.

All we saw were their backs.