Wednesday, 22 June 2016

Tour at 20:30

Report from Eldey: This day full of whale watching ended with better conditions than we had this afternoon. The wind had picked up a bit more and there was some movement on the boat, but the visibility had increased so that we could look for cetaceans in the further distance again. It took us a while till we saw some splashes in the distance and encountered a very active pod of 6-8 white-beaked dolphins. We stayed with them over half an hour because some of them showed us spectacular airial behaviour with spinning and twisting in the air multiple times only 70 meters away from the boat. Great pictures were guaranteed. Then we moved on only to see another pod of 5-6 white-beaked dolphins shortly after. We could only stay with this pod for a little bit because it was time for us to travel back home and enjoy some nice live-music in our saloon. A good ending to an exciting day.

- Barbara Neubarth

Tour at 17:00

Report from Eldey: The weather conditions were considerably worse on this tour compared to the afternoon. The sea was still rather flat but there was thick fog everywhere around us  -  no chance to see any landscape around us since partly the visibility was limited to a couple of hundred meters and felt like even less. Long story short: We didn’t see any cetaceans on this tour even though the sea conditions were favourable. Therefore, we offered everyone a complimentary ticket to come back on another tour with us with hopefully some of our whales and dolphins around. A big thank you to our passengers who celebrated Iceland for its victory in the EU football cup and were still in a great mood in the end of the tour! Hope to see you back with us!  

Hanna Michel

Tour at 14:00

Report from Elding: When we sailed out this afternoon, a thick fog had started to cover Faxa bay. But only a little wind and considerably calm sea made it still pleasant for our passengers  to stay out on the top deck, snuggled in one of our warm overalls. The limited visibility made it quite difficult to spot something in the distance, however we were lucky after about one hour of sailing and saw a pod of 4-6 white-beaked dolphins and could stay with them for a while. Everybody could see them very clearly when they only surfaced 20 meters away from the boat. Then we headed further out into the bay and made the experience that if you can not see that far, you actually concentrate more on the things directly around you and discover some adorable bird behavior by Atlantic puffins and common guillemots like trying to take-off with a stuffed belly. Only 20 minutes later we met another pod of at least 4 white-beaked dolphins and could observe them 2 or 3 times before we drove on because this pod seemed to be a bit elusive, only to find the next pod of approx. 6 individuals. These dolphins came really close to the boat and enabled us to take very nice pictures of them, before it was time for us to return home. A nice afternoon spent with may white-beaked dolphins.

-Barbara Neubarth  

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: The weather had changed dramatically since the 9 o'clock tour! A thick fog lay over the sea but we still had very good weather in Reykjavík so we thought it would be something we would just sail through and that the weather would be as good once we got further out. We were wrong. Once we got to Engey we couldn't see Reykjavík anymore but we were still optimistic and headed to an area where some white-beaked dolphins were last seen. When we got there the fog cleared a bit and we found a pod of five white-beaked dolphins. They were travelling but not very fast so we could stay with them a while so everyone got a good look. You could even see them swimming underneath the surface! We were even more optimistic after the encounter with the dolphins so we decided to leave them to it and go further out. When we started sailing I decided to talk about the landscape on the Snæfellsnes peninsula since we could see it and it's a good thing I did because that was the only time we could see landscape on this tour. As soon as we started sailing again the fog got thicker and the visibility was only about 100 meters. We were hoping that something would come close enough for us to see it or that the fog would clear but neither did. We kept our course though until we ran out of time but didn't see anything else so it's good that we got to enjoy the white-beaked dolphins. All in all a good lesson in Icelandic meteorology.

-Bryndís Ösp

Tour at 10:00

Report from Elding: The weather this morning was just fantastic with almost flat sea and no clouds on the sky. We headed out into Faxaflói bay and after some searching, about one hour after departure, we saw the first minke whale of the tour. We could see it surfaced a couple of times on distance but the whale was a bit elusive and when it went down for a deeper dive we decided to leave the whale alone and look for other species and individuals. The weather was impressing, sunny but some areas out at sea were covered with fog where the visibility was poorer. Sailing today was almost like a fairytale. Our next encounter was also with a minke whale and this individual was much more curious and came really close to the boat. We stayed with this minke for a while before it decided to leave us and headed further out in the bay.  We had heard from other whale watching boats that dolphins had been present in an area close by so we crossed our finger that we also would spot them and set sailed towards them. Time was starting to run out and slowly we started to head back to Reykjavik while we continued to search for dolphins. Suddenly, we were surrounded by a large pod (10-15 individuals) of white-beaked dolphins. They were travelling along the side of our boat and it almost looked like they wanted to follow us back to Reykjavik. The best part was to see the cute little calf swimming just next to its mother, just incredible! This was a perfect end of this tour.

- Johanna Bergman

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: The day started very promising with fantastic sea conditions and sunshine – everything we can ask for on a tour! So we sailed out in the bay under a blue sky and encountered a minke whale after about 50 min. It was very “well-behaved” coming up to the surface regularly with only short dives in-between. Due to the mirror-like sea it was also easy to follow, and also 2 harbour porpoises showed up while we watched the minke. However, when it started to move away from us, we decided to leave it alone and move on to look for something else.  Enjoying the amazing weather we sailed along until we came across a second minke whale. This one was even way better than the first one: it didn´t seem to mind our presence at all and kept traveling next to us just about 60-70 m away from us! Unfortunately we were not able to identify this individual minke whale, I would have liked to know who of our minkes gave us such a nice encounter this morning! Still excited we made our way back to the harbor since we were running out of time.

Hanna Michel

Bird species seen on today´s tours include: northern gannet, northern fulmar, lesser black-backed gulls, kittiwakes, arctic terns, arctic skuas, Atlantic puffins, common guillemots, and eider ducks.