Wednesday, 12 March 2014

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan and Elding: After a successful morning we headed out once again from Reykjavík, though this time we dealt with a lot of rain! We sailed for the same area that we were successful in the morning and after some searching found a Humpback Whale! This whale was very calm and seemed to be travelling slowly, after a while we decided to head further out and it didn´t take long before we spotted a small pod of White-Beaked Dolphins. These were like the first whale and seemed to be slowly travelling, they made for good viewing but we again moved on after a while. It was a good job we did this as we eventually found a pair of Humpback Whales and a pod of 20-30 White-Beaked Dolphins along with many Kittiwakes and Fulmars also feeding in the area. Though the dolphins disappeared the whales were excellent and were coming very close to both boats and even lunge feeding very close. They were happy to put on a show before we had to head back to Reykjavík, but even on the way the sightings continued as we kept seeing pods of dolphins and even another Humpback Whale on the way back to harbour.

- Jack and Megan

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: What a morning! We sailed out on a cloudy but dry morning with relatively calm sea conditions, a slight swell left over from Monday´s storm. It was a long time before we saw anything but then we saw a small pod of Harbour Porpoises (3-5 animals), very shy but passangers got a great look. Then we sailed through a massive flock of seabirds, you are talking about hundreds if not thousands of the birds listed below. No cetaceans however which was very puzzling. Then suddenly out boatsman Bárður spotted a blow. Indeed, two Humpback Whale, one of them was the the same individual observed on the 9th March on the 13:00 tour. The one with the big gash taken out of it. They were travelling at first and then White-beaked Dolphins started to appear, 5-10 at first then more and more started to show up. In teh end there must have been 200-300 all in all. Everything started to feed and then we got some rolling and spy-hopping from one of the Humpback Whales. It was really hard to leave but we had too. On the way home we saw another 2 humpback whales, one in the distance and one we stopped with for a short time. It also starting to feed. Just an incredible Morning tour!

-Megan

Birds seen on todays tour include: Kittiwake, Northern Fulmar, Northern Gannet, Shag, Cormorant, Eider Duck, Common Guillemot, Glaucous Gull, Iceland Gull, Long-Tailed Duck.