Monday, 26 May 2014

Tour at 1700

After a difficult day and a disappointing last tour, we went out determined to do better. It did not look too good after one hour as we had not seen anything by then. But all of a sudden a pod of white-beaked dolphins appeared with an estimate of 8 individuals. Among them was a tiny baby dolphin! We spent a good while with these cute animals as they approached us, swam under the boat and leaped out of the water, showing off their whole bodies. After we left the dolphins we found three minke whales. The first one was difficult and not surfacing a lot but the last one was splendid as it surfaced just meters from the boat so we got to experience it with most of our senses as we could both hear and smell it as it came up. So, after all a very good end of an otherwise difficult day on the bay. All is well that ends well, right?

-Arnór Tumi

Tour at 1300

Report from Elding: What a disappointing tour. We were hoping to find the feeding sea birds from this morning as we headed out but as it turned out, most of them were gone although we got a close look at a few northern gannets. Twice, we spotted a pod of harbour porpoises but they just surfaced twice each and then vanished. All the rest of the tour, we were hoping for some minke whale sightings but were not successful. What a shame. Our passengers got complimentary tickets. Better luck next time!

-Arnór Tumi

Tour 0900

Report from Elding: It was a bit windy as we headed out on the Faxaflói bay this morning. We had to search for a while before we managed to spot a minke whale. It was quite sneaky, did not surface frequently and appeared to be feeding as it was changing its speed and direction a lot and there were lots of feeding sea birds around. After a while we decided to leave the minke whale and found two pods of harbour porpoises, both of which approached the boat. Two more minkes were then spotted before we headed back but like the first one, they were quite difficult to spot and they would never come up in the same direction from the boat. It was a challenging tour but although we would have wished for some more sightings, we did get a nice look at three seperate minke whales and several porpoises

-Arnór Tumi

Birds seen on today's tours include: Eider ducks, fulmars, kittiwakes, northern gannets, puffins, guillemots, sea gulls, manx shearwaters, razorbills