Tuesday, 15 March 2016

Status: RUNNING

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan and Elding: The wind had picked up a little more on this tour. However as it was coming in from the south-east the sailing offshore was not too bad, a couple of splashes over the bow of Elding but for those wearing the complimentary overalls it was a lot of fun. It was the vessel Elding that found the first of the cetaceans on this tour, a pod of 12-15 white beaked dolphins, in a clustered group milling around followed by a few kittiwakes over their heads. It's great when the birds get involved as it is easier to follow them than the whales sometimes. Once the other whale watching boats arrived we continued and came across some more white-beaked dolphins, a small pod of 3-5 but they were scattered and faster surfacing. They were a lot more fun to watch as they were bow-riding and playing in the wakes of the boat. The captain of Elding 'Gusti' spotted a blow so we were off to investigate, spotting more and more dolphins as we did. Then suddenly we got a call from Hafsúlan telling us that they found a humpback-whale. Whoo-hoo. A rather small individual that spent most of it's just under the surface being annoyed by white-beaked dolphins. You could follow it easily though. More boats came so Elding searched further offshore and came across more dolphins. All in all there must have been at least 30-40 dolphins seen throughout the tour. We net back to try and find the humpback but no such luck. We sailed home and as we headed into the wind there was more splashes coming over. Those that stayed outside truly enjoyed but there was a few green faces too. It was an adventurous day out in Faxafloi. 

- Megan and Sigurlaug. 

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: The visibility over the bay was not great today and the low clouds covered the landscape that we can usually enjoy on the tours. These conditions can be really good for spotting cetaceans. After an hour we got a call from another boat that they had found dolphins. On our way to there we spotted another pod of 10-12 white beaked dolphins. They were really easy to get a good look at as they traveled slowly around without changing directions often. While watching this pod we realized that there were many other pods of dolphins around us. at some point it did not matter where you stood on the boat you always able to see dolphins popping up in front of you, they were everywhere. Some of the pods seemed to be feeding and came up to the surface with more speed and kept and we saw dolphins leaping and breaching every now and then. this was clearly an amazing show of the white beaked dolphins with at least 40-50 animals.

-Sigurlaug

Birds seen on the tour: northern gannet, northern fulmar, great black blacked gull, glaucous gull, Iceland gull, herring gull, kittiwake, black guillemot, long-tailed duck and eider duck.