Monday, 16 May 2016

We are sailing out today from the Old Harbour in Reykjavik. It is partially clouded but little Wind from the northwest

Tour 17:00

Report from Eldey: Our sail out of the harbour remained fairly calm again for this evenings tour but a rain cloud loomed in the distance. Our tour began with sightings of a pod of at least 5 white-beaked dolphins who were feeding all around the boat. We continued travelling  further out into the bay where we spotted a blow from a humpback whale in the distance. We stayed with this individual for numerous surfaces and dives before spotting another humpback blow fairly close-by. We stayed with these two indivduals - but the heavens opened and many of our guests retreated to the warm middle deck to watch from the windows. As we returned back to Reykjavik we were greeted by another pod of white-beaked dolphins who we stayed with for over 10 minutes - who flashed their white striped bellies at us from all angles.

- Darcy

Tour 13:00

Report from Eldey: The sea stayed relatively calm, though the wind had increased it's strength and the sky was a little more covered than in the morning. We sailed for about 40 min when we spotted at the horizon the fluke of a humpback whale hitting repeatedly the surface of the water. We approached it and we saw the animal going up and down for several minutes, moving really quick from one place to the other. We were amazed about how fast was the animal.Then we realized the truth: there were two of them feeding together at the same spot! We also managed to spot both of them at the same place, arising from the surface of the water in a really harmonious and wonderful way. There was also a minke whale in the surroundings, but unfortunately we didn't manage to spot it perfectly. We continued our sailing, leaving this wonderful couple of humpys, as we detected some fast splashes in the surface, about a km away from us. They were indeed a small 5-8 pod of white beaked dolphins, which were jumping and breaching towards our direction. When they approached us they ceased their jumping, but we were able to still spotting their dorsal fins and their white stripes underneath the water. Some harbour porpoises showed up also at this time, so we did manage to identify the 4 most common species of cetaceans in our waters of Faxaflói.

- Alberto & Hanna

Tour 09:00

Report from Eldey: We started sailing with relatively calm weather, though there were some little whitecaps which made the spotting a little hard. We spend approximately an hour searching for cetaceans, when suddenly we saw in the horizon a couple of big flocks of birds. We travelled towards that direction till we saw in the horizon a big clean blow. When we approached to it, we could see a humpback whale surfacing the area. He offered us the chance of see their flippers, and also it's fluke. We were looking for it on an on when, suddenly, a second blow appeared really close to us. We were, indeed, in a good feeding area for these animals. In a certain point we started to look around us, and we notice that, indeed, there were a lots of blows raising in the distance. We manage to count at least 7 of different individuals. In our way back to the harbour we saw a small pod of harbour porpoises traveling really close to us.

- Alberto & Hanna

Bird species seen on today´s tours include: northern gannet, cormoran, northern fulmar, common guillemot, razorbill, Atlantic puffin, Arctic tern, kittiwake, lesser black-backed gull, eider ducks and Arctic skuas.