At around 11.30 a.m. last Friday, two whales took a look around the small harbour of the local sailing club. Sailing instructor Jan Philip Leon from the Hanseatic Yacht School Glücksburg filmed the impressive event and shared the video in the social media. Not only the undertow and the crashing waves can be seen, but also the backs of the large sea creatures emerging several times. After three or four minutes, the sea creatures disappeared back into the fjord.
Experts agree: they must have been curious humpback whales. One of the animals is said to have been more than ten metres long, the other is estimated to be around two metres. It is possible that it was a young animal with its mother.
This is not the first time that such giants have been sighted on the Baltic coast. This is often due to feeding behaviour, for example when schools of fish deviate from their normal routes due to storms. In particular, harbour porpoises and fin whales have been spotted in the region in recent years. The latter are significantly larger than the humpback whales that have now been spotted, which grow to an average length of 13 metres and weigh around 30 tonnes.
In 2016, a young humpback whale travelled for months in the Greifswald Bodden and even collided with a sailing yacht. In general, according to the WWF (World Wide Fund For Nature) There are more than 65,000 humpback whales worldwide with populations in the North Atlantic, North Pacific and also in the southern hemisphere.
The videos of the two humpback whales:
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Max Gasser
Editor Test & Technology
