SUNDAY, 5 JUNE 2016

Tour at 17:00

Report from Eldey: On one of my most incredible tours yet we began our journey from Reykjavik harbour on glassy seas in perfect conditions. Within forty minutes we spotted the back of a minke whale 200 m away. We stayed with this animal as it surfaced and dived and were joined by at least three more individuals who surfaced all around the boat. We heard news that a humpback was in the area so we sailed out further into the bay on course for spotting the whale. Sure enough we happened upon a blow of the humpback whale and just made out the hump as it went on a deeper dive. This animal remained fairly elusive - surfacing behind the boat and refusing to give customers a closer look at its fluke! We decided to travel on further, in an arc around the bay and were greeted with at least 3 more minke whales with one individual surfacing 50 m next to the boat and showing us it's impressive snout-first dive technique. A pod of 2-3 white-beaked dolphins joined in the frivolities allowing us to catch a glimpse of their white-striped backs. It was nearly time to travel back when a blow from a humpback was spotted at least 2 km away. Conferring with the captain we decided to follow the blow deeper out into the bay. We were on course for a large flock of birds when we saw the blow again as we watched this animal dive and show it´s fluke within 150 m of us. As we slowly began to turn around we were greeted with gasps from the customers...the whale had breached!! And then what became the best show of the day the animal breached a further 5 times, tail slapping, pectoral fin slapping and tail-lobbing itself out of the water all within 50 m of the boat. Too flabbergasted to speak we all watched this amazing animal in awe of it´s impressive display. The animal even lay on its back under the water - playfully tail-slapping, with the splashes of water loudly resonating around the boat. We stayed with this animal for over 20 minutes and were all completely blown away by its spell-binding performance. We even got a wave goodbye from the animal as we headed back towards the harbour on what turned out to be a truly breath-taking tour!!!

- Darcy Philpott 

Tour at 14:00

Report from Skrúður: Again on this trip we benefited from excellent sighting conditions. The sky was still overcast with clouds, but the wind had lessened compared to this morning, and there was almost no swell to shake us up. It took us about one hour before we reached an area where we spotted 3 minke whales. 2 were surfacing in the distance while we could get close looks at the third one. During our following of this individual, we could realize that this area was actually full of minkes. They were surfacing all around us in the distance, it was sometime hard to tell if we were seeing different whales or if we were sighting the same ones at different spots, but we might have encountered up to 8-10 minke whales. At some point we heard news of another specie from other whale watching boats so we moved away. After few minutes of traveling, we could meet a humpback whale ! This individual was really hard to follow at first, it was taking long deep dives, surfacing one time far away from us and going back for a while underwater. But we persevered, we hanged on, and ultimately the whale became more cooperative, allowing us to get closer and have incredible looks at its fluke. At some point another minke whale joined the frenzy and we could witness two different species at the same time ! It was an incredible encounter and we could enjoy it until our time was over.

- Guillaume Calcagni

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: The weather today could not have been better, it was incredible! Overcast but still bright and warm and beautiful. It was not long before we started to see a our first minke whales, popping up here and there. at least 3 seen but we wanted to get out to the area were hopefully we could see both humpback whale and minkes at the same time. However, one particular minke whale got our attention, coming to the surface many times, close to the boat and even started feeding under a flock of birds. We were delighted to discover that this was one of our regular minke whales, 'Resight Guy' seen almost every year in the bay since 2008. It was hard to leave The Resight Guy but we also wanted to show our passengers a humpback whale. Low and behold after 10 more minutes of sailing, a blow was seen. A humpback whale and minke whale around, at least 2-3 minkes. As we waited for the humpback to surface we enjoyed the minkes. It was incredible. Even a cute pod or 2-3 harbour porpoises also popped up suddenly but I don't think many passengers got to see them as they were so quite today. Great tour, Great Day. 

- Megan Whittaker

Tour at 10:00

Report from Elding II: It was overcast and quite cold when we started sailing so we made good use of our warm overalls. The crew on Eldey had told us that they were heading further out but they had spotted a humpback whale in an area we were heading to so we should stay on course. When we got there we saw a lot of birds feeding which is always a good sign. We decided to be patient and look for the humpback so the crew and the passengers all worked together in scanning the surface of the ocean to see if we could spot it. We were all on look-out for the humpback so we were happily surprised when a minke whale surfaced quite close. We stayed with it for a while and it seemed to be feeding becuse it often dived down for deeper dives and changed direction a lot so we never new where it would pop up next. We then spotted a large flock of birds closer to Hvalfjörður (Wjale fjord) and wanted to check that area out so we headed there and almost immediately saw a blow! This could be the humpback whale we were looking for earlier. It came up only once or twice to breath between longer dives but that turned out to be a good thing because it fluked every time it dove down so we could see that the underside of the fluke was quite dark. When it had been diving for a very long time we started to suspect that it could be trying to break the record for the longest humpback dive so we went further out so see what else was lurking in the bay. We spotted a couple of harbour porpoises travelling very slowly so everyone got a good look at them but then it was time to head back to the harbour. An amazing encounter with three species of cetaceans!

-Bryndís Ösp Birgisdóttir

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: We started sailing with a cloud covered sky but not much wind. It was a little bit foggy so much of the surrounding landscape was not visible. After sailing for 40 minutes we spotted a blow about 500 meters away from us. It was a humpback whale, we saw the animal surfacing a few times when we heard that another humpback whale had been spotted in the area. This humpback liked to show its beautiful fluke to us by putting it high above the water when diving down. During our encounter with the humpback we also spotted two minke whales not far from the boat. More boats started approaching the humpback whale and we decided to travel back to the animal we had sighted before. It seemed like this humpback whale was feeding, it stayed very close to the surface and came up to breathe many times also close to the boat. All the passengers were able to get a good look at the animal. Unfortunately, we had to leave the humpback whale to travel back towards Reykjavik. On our way back a group of Manx shearwaters decided to accompany us for a little while. All in all a very nice tour with a great humpback whale encounter.

-Anouk

Birds seen on today's tour include: northern gannet, arctic tern, northern fulmar, great black backed gull, kittiwake, atlantic puffin, razorbill, common guillemot, eider duck, cormorants, eider ducks.