The whale dove just in front of me, tail in the air as it slid below the surface.
A humpback whale appears in the sonar at over 100ft below the Nordic Quest
It was a pretty sight, the huge tail silhouetted against the grey water. Satisfied that there was no danger of collision I continued on course. The whale was down, how far down I didn’t know, but well enough that I was not going to hit it.
It was a minute or two later I got the answer. A large return showed up in the sonar display, a system designed to find fish found something considerably larger. A little over 100 feet down the whale passed through the cone of sound. The blob shows no features, in retrospect I wish I had changed the sonar mode to high frequency which gives better resolution, I normally keep it in low frequency while cruising as it has a larger cone.
Still, I did see the whale in the display, something I had kept an eye out for previously, but never actually seen.
