Friday, 04 September 2015

Tour at 17:00

Report from Eldey: The calmness continued under the evening tour, amazing to see the sea so flat with only some rolling swells from yesterday's wind. The overcast sky gave good conditions for spotting cetaceans. We started off with some playful white-beaked dolphins that were jumping and coming up to the boat checking us out. All and all we had 10-15 dolphins around us, among them an old friend of us called Montgomery with a very special shape to the dorsal fin. At the same time we had two minke whales giving us only short glimpse. We headed further out and came across an area with a lot of feeding seabirds and at least 4-5 minke whales. We could constantly see dolphins and minkes in the distance because of the good conditions. A really nice tour in the calm evening.

- Marcus Bergström 

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: On this beautiful afternoon the sea surface was extremely flat as we left the harbour in Reykjavik. We only traveled for a short while before we encountered our first individual, a minke whales. After this surprisingly quick first sighting we continued to spot minke whales all around. Not far off we also saw a small pod of harbour porpoises with around 3 individuals. These animals vanished as fast as they appeared. Another nice surprise was the large amount of white- beaked dolphins in the Faxaflói bay. We saw 3 pods of dolphins during our tour with around 17 dolphins in total. On the way back home we continued to spot several minke whales surface in all different directions of the boat, making this an amazing and beautiful way to end our tour. Estimating at least 6 different minke whales.

- Michaela Buchbauer

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: The sea was amazingly calm and still as we made our way out. We could see from a great distance so hopes were high as we searched for cetaceans. The first minke whale we spotted was only 15 minutes from the harbour. Unfortunately it proved to be a very elusive individual and so we moved on. We passed another 2 until we came upon a large flock of feeding gulls where we had 5 minke whales lunge feeding and coming right up to the boat. There was also hundreds of juvenile kittiwakes feeding too giving us amazing views. Eventually we had to make our way back and we were lucky to pass about 3 pods of 5 harbour porpoises. Beautiful calm day. 

-Tommy Torrades

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