Sunday, 30 March 2014

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: It was still calm as we headed out this afternoon. After a short sailing we found minke whales. There were 4 or 5 of them swimming calmly along in quite a large area. After we had seen some splashes in the distance we decided to leave the minkes behind. On our way we spotted a few groups of harbour porpoises. When got to the area where the splashes had been seen, we found a humpback whale! It even showed off its fluke once and seemed to be in a very calm mood too. On the way back we spotted lots of white-beaked dolphins. There must have been at least 40 of them around. Then when we saw one last sneaky humpback whale that showed us its fluke twice before we had to head back to Reykjavík. Brilliant tour in almost perfect weather!

-Arnór Tumi

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsulan: Sailed in beautiful Spring conditions with calm waters and blue skies, there was a chill in the air but everyone wrapped up warm. After leaving the harbour we sailed for about 30 minutes and spotted a pod of 20-30 White-beaked Dolphins. They were wonderful, surfacing slowly, probably resting. We turned off the engines and listened to them exhale. we could see a massive flock of birds on the horizon in the distance to we started to head in the direction but soon saw a Minke Whale. Nicely surfaced 3-5 times giving everyone a chance to see it before it became more difficult to track. We continued heading towards the birds and found ourselves surrounded by Harbour Porpoises (smallest cetacean around Iceland) and seabirds, but no more Minke Whales. We then saw splashes towards Akranes and found a another small pod of White-beaked Dolphins, an adult with 2 juveniles, one younger than the other. These were leaping and playing for joy and played around the boat. Whilst watching these we could see more dolphins in the distance and realised that they were everywhere 50+ scattered, mainly females with a calf (baby dolphins), seeing them surface together side by side was just magical.

-Megan

Birds seen on today's tours include: Eider Ducks, Shags, Glaucous Gulls, Fulmars, Gannets, Kittiwakes, Black-backed Gulls.