Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey: Our tour started in Grindavík today since we were hoping to have better luck with cetaceans on the south coast of Iceland than in the last few days in Faxaflói. After only 20 min we encountered a small pod of 3-4 harbour porpoises and also 5-6 white-beaked dolphins close by. They had been jumping when we spotted them and then stayed a while around our boat milling around. We soon moved on to head a bit further offshore and kept looking for more cetaceans. The sea conditions were really got, there was just some swell that made some of our passengers' faces turn green. It was a bit disappointing after a while since we didn't spot any cetaceans for the next two hours. However, we were already on our way back to the harbour, when we saw another pod of white-beaked dolphins jumping out of the water. We turned towards them to slowly approach but then saw that the dolphins actually headed towards us and gave as a great time. They played around the bow of our boat and kept swimming all around us. The best thing was that there were at least 3-4 mother-calf pairs within the group of 15-20 animals and also a few juvenile animals that were pretty curious about us. A great ending for a very cold tour off the south coast!
- Hanna Michel
Bird species seen on today's tour include: northern fulmars, Iceland gulls, glaucous gulls, black-backed gulls, and great northern divers.