Fin Whale

Fin whales turn up wherever the krill and small schooling fish are thick, which on Antarctic voyages usually means open water rather than close to shore. The Drake Passage crossing is a reliable place to pick out their tall, straight blows from the deck, and sightings continue through the Scotia Sea and into the feeding grounds off the Antarctic Peninsula, generally from December through March when the Southern Ocean's summer productivity peaks.

They are easy to underestimate from a distance: a brownish-gray back with a paler underside, built for speed rather than display, and often travelling in small pods of six to ten. What they lack in showiness they make up for in scale, second only to the blue whale among all cetaceans, with the largest individuals reported at 26 to 27.3 metres. Listen closely on a calm day and you may catch nothing at all, since much of their communication sits below 40 hertz, at the low end of what a human ear can register.

The Southern Hemisphere population is still rebuilding after industrial whaling removed hundreds of thousands of animals through the mid-20th century, so encounters here carry a bit more weight than they might elsewhere. Numbers remain well below prewhaling levels, which makes every sighting in these waters worth lingering on rather than rushing past for the next photo.