Wednesday, 09 April 2014

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: We sailed out into a beautifully sunny Bay in the afternoon and spotted our first Minke Whale not even 30 minutes after leaving the harbour. It surfaced fairly close to the boat and gave us a good look at its back and dorsal fin. Our luck continued with several other Minkes (5+ individuals in course of the afternoon), some of them surfacing right next to our boat. And we were also visited by several pods of Harbour Porpoises (50+ individuals altogether) at different times. During the sunny bouts of the afternoon the light was just right for us to see their little bodies - some even under the water surface. Towards the end of our tour we headed out a bit further to watch the first Humpback Whale of the day. It turned out to be the same individual we have been spotting over the last couple of days - as discovered when the whale fluked beautifully right before we had to head back in. Great looks at three different species, a double rainbow and rapidly changing weather made this tour another amazing one!

- Linda/Megan

Tour at 9:00

Report from Elding and Hafsúlan: It was a lovely morning when we sailed out of Reykjavík harbour. It was a bit cloudy but the weather was still and as soon as we left the harbour we saw a few Northern Gannets. We saw that as a very good sign. We weren't far from the harbour when we saw a pod of White Beaked Dolphins feeding alongside some birds. Most of the birds were kittiwakes and fulmars. We left the dolphins feeding after getting a good look at them swimming around and breaching out of the water. As we sailed further we saw 3-5 individual Minke Whales. One whale surfaced very close to Elding once but the rest stayed further off. We also got a brief look at some Harbour Porpoises but they didn't feel like staying with us and disappeared once we came close. Hafsúlan came in a little bit later and was almost surrounded by Porpoises at times. It was a nice sailing, a little bit choppy at parts, but the conditions were still rather good. We ended our lovely tour back in Reykjavík harbour.

-Soffia/Linda/Megan

Birds seen on today´s tour: Fulmars, Kittiwakes, Eider Ducks, Whooper Swans, Glaucous Gulls, Black Backed Gulls, Common Guillemots, Razorbills, Gannets.