Sunday, 3 April 2016

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: The weather didn't change much from the morning so we still had perfect conditions for whale watching. After a short time we spotted blows far north in the bay and noticed 2-3 white beaked dolphins that had popped up right next to our boat. Instead of sailing north to search for these animals we decided to go back to the area where we had the humpbacks on the morning tour. This was not a bad decision because we got amazing sightings in that area. 6-7 humpback whales and two pods of white beaked dolphins with 8-9 individuals each. At one point we saw these two pods of dolphins come together around two humpbacks. What made it even easier to follow them around was that a flock of kittiwakes flew always above them and clearly wanted their share of the fish the larger animals were feeding on. As soon as we decided to turn around and get back to land one humpback breached high out of the water and did so many times! Then it started head slapping, pec slapping, tail splashing, tail lobbing and almost everything that we could have imagined!! This was most likely the best ending to a tour I have seen! And who cares if we were almost 20 minutes late to land, it was definitely worth it. 

-Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: The weather this morning was good, a cold 5-9m/s wind from the east but very good sea conditions. We started our journey to the southwest, sailing close to Reykjavik´s closest lighthouse, Grótta. However, soon after leaving the harbour splashes could be seen in the distance, the size and frequency of the splashes allowed to identify that the splashes causing the splashes must be from white-beaked dolphins, we searched for them once they stopped breaching but couldn´t find them so we headed towards Hafnafjörður again to the area we found humpback whales yesterday. On the way we saw more splashes from dolphins and as they approached we could see that there wasn´t their usual pod size of 5-7 individuals but a scattered pod of at least 50 individuals, they were going crazy, breaching, bow-riding and traveling with the boat. They were in a very playful mood and seemed to be enjoying our company as we enjoyed theirs. After a great time with the dolphins we continuted and in the same place as we left the humpbacks yesterday we found them again. At least five humpback whales, which were relaxing and milling in the area. One even breached out of the water (jumped) but it was so fast and unpredicted that only a few passengers saw it. One also was pectoral slapping (hitting flippers on the waters surface) for a short time too. It was nice to see their beautiful flukes (tails) raise out of the water on many occasions too. A great morning to be out whale watching. 

- Megan Whittaker

Birds seen on the tours: northern fulmars, northern gannet, lesser black backed gull, kittiwake, shag, cormorants, black guillemots, great black backed gull, black headed gull, common gull, glaucous gull, iceland gull and herring gull. 

Status: Running

We are sailing out from Reykjavík today in hopes of finding more whales! For more information please contact our ticket office at elding@elding.is or ( +354 ) 519 5000