Van Os Photo Safaris, Spitsbergen/Svalbard Photo Tour

The Van Os Photo Safaris epic 17-day Ultimate Pack Ice photography voyage encountered a dead white sperm whale north of the Svalbard Archipelago on the second day of our trip in June 2023.

We were beyond the northern limit of the Svalbard archipelago (about 650 miles, 1046 kilometers from the North Pole) and a thick fog was setting in. And then something extraordinary happened—something comparable to winning a lottery. Our ship’s bridge crew had spotted a mass of northern fulmars (albatross relatives) swarming around what they thought was a piece of ice floating in the open ocean relatively far from land. But it wasn’t ice. It was a dead sperm whale. And not just any dead sperm whale—but a totally white one, perhaps an albino, still in almost perfect shape. We had found the corpse of Moby Dick! As the group created thousands of images of the event, few at the time realized that this might be among the rarest photo opportunities they will ever have in their lifetime. To think of the chance of coming across a floating dead whale in thick fog was a rare enough event, but to encounter a huge white male sperm whale, reminiscent of the writing of Herman Melville, seemed almost mythological.

There are several reasons that could cause a sperm whale to die. Some of the most common causes include ship strikes, ingestion of plastics and other marine debris mistaken for prey species, and malnutrition. This whale did not have any visible sign of a ship strike, nor did it appear malnourished.

Видео Van Os Photo Safaris, Spitsbergen/Svalbard Photo Tour канала vanosphotosafaris