Cruising on the wild side

"I am very sorry to interrupt your excellent dinner," booms the godlike voice of the expedition leader on a loudspeaker, "but I suggest you get up and go to the port-side deck. Right away!"

"Either the ship is sinking or he's spotted a whale," one of my dinner companions jokes, "and he didn't tell us to fetch our life jackets."

Stefan Kredel has indeed seen a whale - in fact, a pod of whales, and by the time we scramble outside to look they are all around us, mostly humpbacks though at one point a fin whale pops above the surface.