MONDAY, 13 JULY 2015

Tour at 20:30

Report from Elding: After blessing us with sunny weather for days, Iceland decided to not let us forget the feeling of rain. Thus we set sail in rainy conditions, but the brave passengers were not impressed by being cold and wet and stayed outside, on the look out for cetaceans. And this strategy paid, because after traveling far offshore a minke whale was spotted. It surfaced very close to the boat before going for a deep dive. We did not stay to get additional looks to this whale because shortly after its appearance, a pod of white-beaked dolphins showed up ! There was about 6 of those magnificent animals. We could have a close encounter with them and have a sight of the white patterns on their body, even underwater when they swam under the boat. During our following of those animal, we met another minke whale. This one was quite elusive, taking long deep dives and surfacing only one or two times to breathe, but we managed to get interesting looks. After that it was time to get back home, and passengers could warm up inside the saloon with the nice company of Bjarni, our musician, that put a very good show (as usual !). A nice trip, despite the rain !

- Guillaume Calcagni 

Tour at 17:00

Report from Hafsúlan:  It was a rainy day today but the conditions for whale watching were just perfect. We had only sailed for about 20 minutes when we spotted our first minke whale. This individual was really great, came close to the boat and everybody got a real good look. We could identify this individual as Short sword, a minke whale that we first encountered in 2008 in Faxaflói bay. This was a great way to begin the tour but as we got further out it got even better. We encountered 3 more minke whales and then a pod of white-beaked dolphins turned up right next to the boat. This pod was travelling really slow so we figured they were either milling or resting. After a while with the dolphins we saw a big blow in some distance. We got really excited because a big blow usually means a big cetacean. It turned out that we had seen a blow from a humpback whale, or actually two blows because there were two humpbacks travelling together. These individuals were both pretty big and at one point we had both of them only about 20 meters from the boat. I was so happy to see these whales that I totally forgot about the rain and we all enjoyed a special moment with these animal. A perfect way to end the tour. 

- Katrín Björnsdóttir

Tour at 14:00

Report from Elding and Eldey: Due to high number of passengers we went out on two boats this afternoon. We got great conditions for whale watching, flat sea and cloudy sky that made it easy for us to spot animals coming up in a long distance. We saw the first pod of harbour porpoises only few minutes after we left the harbour and we got to see two other pods of porpoises on the tour. Elding was first out and got to a good area with both minke whales and dolphins and Eldey then later came to join in. We followed a big pod of white beaked dolphins with 8-9 individuals for a long time and we got a really good look at them. After we left the dolphins we split up, both of the boats got to see other minke whales and it seemed like the bay was full of dolphins because it didn't matter where we went we nearly always were able to spot them around us. Over all we saw 5-7 minke whales and 6-7 pods of dolphins.

- Hanna Michel & Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: On our afternoon tour we went straight out towards the area we had so many sightings on the morning tour. It didn't take long until we spotted our first minke whale, which led us to a group of harbour porpoises. These were unusually calm and didn't vanish as they tend to do during other encounters with these animals. After a while with these marine mammals we spotted several jumping white- beaked dolphins in the distance. At this point the tour started to repeat itself again, having several encounters with different minke whales as well as harbour porpoises and pods of dolphins continuously. Estimating 3-5 minke whales, 2 pods of harbour porpoises with around 8 individuals and 3 pods of white- beaked dolphins with approximately 18-20 individuals.

- Michaela Buchbauer

Tour at 10:00

Report from Elding: We went out from Reykjavík this morning with light rain and an overcast sky but the sea conditions were perfect. We spotted the first minke whale after only about 20 minutes of sailing. However, we only saw it twice before it vanished. So we moved on and soon found two pods of white-beaked dolphins that were joining together (total of about 20 animals) and feeding with many birds. As they were herding the fish together, we watched them jumping out of the water and slapping their flukes on the water surface - quite a show for us! We spent some time with them before deciding to look for something else. We were hoping to also find a less shy minke whale but first we saw another pod of white-beaked dolphins. They were spread out over a large area so we could see them all around us, and they also appeared to be feeding. Still looking out for the minke whales, we started heading back to the harbour. Then we came in to an area where another boat had spotted a minke whale. This was the most curious individual I have ever seen. The other boat was about 100 m away from us, and we could watch the minke whale spy hopping right next to it, i. e. it was raising head-first out of the water to check the people on the boat out. It did this 4-5 times, then it came towards us and surfaced only 10 m away from our boat, before it returned to the other boat and spy hopped again. It was incredible, this minke whale has made a lot of friends today! 

- Hanna Michel 

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: On this rather calm morning we went out from the harbour of cetaceans. After leaving the main Reykjavik area, we encountered our first animals not far out. Our initial sighting was a minke whale infront of the boat, followed by several white- beaked dolphins and even more minke whales. This continued throughout our tour, seeing dolphins one minute and another minke whale another minute. We even got to see several of these animals close to the boat as wall as jumping dolphins only 30 meters away. Estimating 4-6 minke whales and 4-5 pods of white beaked dolphins with approximately 22-28 individuals.

- Michaela Buchbauer

Bird species seen on today's tours include: northern gannets, northern fulmars, kittiwakes, puffins, common guillemots, arctic skuas and lesser black-backed gulls.