Tour at 17:00
Report from Eldey: Still strong winds from the north, making the swells hit us from the side as we headed out in Faxaflói. After only 40 minutes of sailing the guide spotted very big splashes in the south. Three big splashes were seen towards the horizon, only reasonable explanation must be a breaching whale. We of course headed towards that direction. It was far away and it took us some time to get closer and on our way one more big splash was observed. Unfortunately no whale was found even though we spend a long time in the area. The best guess is that it was a breaching minke whale, which tend to happen rarely during bad weather. We continued and soon we got awarded with a very nice pod of 8-9 white-beaked dolphins treated us with jumping and other interesting behavior. We could spend a long time with the dolphins and we left them happily after that time was running out and we had to head towards Reykjavík.
- Marcus Bergström
Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey and Hafsúlan: Due to the large number of passengers we decided to go out with two of our boats on this tour. Hafsúlan left a few minutes before Eldey. The passengers on Eldey got to see the blow of minke whale after about an hour of sailing but unfortunately we didn't spot it again. So we kept searching and found our first group of 9-11 white-beaked dolphins showing up right in front of us. Like this morning, they were pretty curious swimming all around us and checking us out. A few of them were showing off and kept jumping out of the water, amazing to watch. Suddenly another minke whale showed up but again it disappeared very quickly. So we decided to move on to find a more relaxed individual, but instead found another group of 5-6 white-beaked dolphins almost as playful as their conspecifics we had encountered earlier. Then we started to head back to the harbour slowly, hoping to see another minke whale on the way back. Indeed, we encountered another one that surfaced only meters from us suddenly. It may have got scared surfacing so close to a boat all of the sudden, and we it didn't show itself again. As we continued our way to the harbour, we saw another minke whale surfacing about 50 m away from us and then also another group of 6-7 white-beaked dolphins. The vessel Hafsúlan was unlucky with the wildlife, always at the wrong place at the wrong time. One minke whale was seen once and we had a very short encounter with the 6-7 white-beaked dolphins so we offered our passengers complimentary tickets for another free tour in the next 2 years.
- Hanna Michel and Megan Whittaker
Tour at 09:00
Report from Eldey: We went out from Reykjavík on this rainy and cloudy morning. In terms of sea conditions, however, this was the best tour of the day since the sea was not as rough yet, even though the wind had picked up since yesterday. It took about an hour to find the first cetaceans, a group of 8-10 white-beaked dolphins. Even though they went for a rather long dive first, we soon saw them coming closer to us and bow-riding giving us some great looks at them underwater. And they would not be the only dolphins on this tour as we managed to find two more groups of these dolphins each consisting of 6-8 individuals. And just like their first groups they were pretty curious and staying around us for a while. The third group of dolphins suddenly showed up while we were watching a minke whale. It surfaced 5-6 times within 100 m from us before it steamed off and we headed back to Reykjavík.
- Hanna Michel
Bird species seen on today's tours include: northern gannets, northern fulmars, kittiwakes, lesser black-backed gulls, black-headed gull, brent geese and arctic terns.