THURSDAY, 7 JULY 2016

Status: RUNNING

It´s another sunny and beautiful day and we are sailing from the Old Harbour in Reykjavik. 

Tour at 20:30

Report from Eldey: This midnight tour started with a very sunny bay. People were really excited. We also had a musician on board who finished the tour up by playing beautiful covers. After 40 minutes of sailing I could see with my binoculars a big blow in the distance. I got super excited! it was still far away but we got to the area in about 10 minutes. We could see at least 6 blows until we got a closer look to the animal. After some minutes of wait a humpback whale surprised us by surfacing about 50 meters from the boat!wow! the blow in the sun was amazing!we could not see a rainbow this time but it was not less beautiful than other times. We could tell the heart-shaped blow the humpbacks are known for amongst our crew. After a couple more dives we headed out in search for other species. We could see finally on our way back another individual very close to the boat heading west. Unfortunately we were running out of time so we had to go back to the harbour. Lovely trip with a gorgeous view on the Snafellsnes peninsula with a melting sunrise on top of Snafellsnesjokull.

- Jorge Pascual

Tour at 17.00

Report from Eldey: We started this evening tour quite excited, knowing the activity that we had on the previous tours of the morning and afternoon. The sun was shining, almost punching ourselves. It was, indeed, one of those unusual days out on Faxafloi. It took a little of time, though, to find our first humpback whale. We managed to see the animal surfacing quite a few times, about 200 m away from the boat. It also showed us a couple of times it's wonderful fluke when the animal went for a deep dive, thus giving us the change to acknowledge that, indeed, it was one of the same individuals that we spotted this morning. We left the animal since other boats were also enjoying it (we are always respecting as much as we can the welfare of our beloved whales!), thinking that the encounter was hard to overtake, but we were so wrong. A second humpback whale appeared suddenly, about 100 m away from us. We tried to follow it, but it disappear underneath the water, just to appear a little closer, more or less half the distance. It disappear, again, just to surprise us by surfacing just right were we were, only 15 m away from the boat! Our dear passengers enjoyed the incredible close view of this animal, and just as the researchers that were with me pointed out, it did seem that this humpy was really curious about our presence! Even when we left, the animal kept sailing in the same direction as us, some 50 m away! It was a beautiful experience. In our way back home, we managed to see a couple more of humpbacks, one of them really small, probably a juvenile. In total, 4 humpbacks whales in this magnificent tour!

- Alberto Alejandro

Tour at 14:00

Report from Elding: The sea conditions were not the best today. A bit swelly on the way out but perfectly fine on the way back. The weather was lovely on the other hand. A bit windy but sunny all the way. After 30 minutes of search we found our beloved humpback whale. Lovely animal which was swimming along the boat showing his immense back and giving us sudden blows leaving the audience in awe. We stayed with the animal for about 30 minutes. It did not seem to care at all. Our fish finder kept on telling us there was a lot fish around. The whale kept on going for short dives. Most of the fish was half way from the bottom so it did not need much to reach it. Also it changed directions from time to time. It was most likely feeding. The rest of the tour was more like a bird watching! we could see a couple of fights with arctic skuas and arctic terns. Pretty amazing! We could not find more species but  the one we saw was terrific! nice tour spent in the sun!

- Jorge Pascual

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: We sailed out again with big hope to find cetaceas an another tour today and we did not get disappointed! After just a little more than half an hour we came across a minke whale that surfaced about 200 m away from us. Since we only saw it twice, I am not sure if all our passengers had a chance of spotting it. However, the reason that we did not spend much more time with the minke was that at the same time we also detected bigger blows about 1 km away from us. Therefore, we headed over to that area and as we approached the animal slowly, it suddenly jumped out of the water so that we could see the full beauty of a humpback whale! It was a very active individual, after the brreaching it started tail-slapping and tail-lobbing for about 10 min non-stop. Sometimes it would do the reserve tail-slapping, rolling on it´s back, swmming belly up close to the water surface while hitting the fluke on the water surface. It came so closs to us that we could here the sound of the impact and be got to see it´s pectoral fns (flippers) as well. Absolutely incredible! After a while it probably needed a break and calmed down a liittle bit. We left this cool humpback along to look for something else and found two more humpbacks further out in the bay! The first one just travled slowly next to us for 15-20 min, while we saw the other one just on the end of the tour before heading back to the harbour. Latter also seemed rather small, probably a juvenile or sub-adult! Extremly enjoyable tour!

- Hanna Michel

Tour at 10:00

Report from Elding: The sun was shining beautifully as we sailed out into Faxafloi bay. Once out into the bay the wind started picking up causing a fair few white caps to form on the waters surface. This however, did not deter out efforts in the search for cetaceans. Far out into the bay þruma 1 one of out inflatable rib boats radioed us to let us know there was a humpback whale up ahead. As we traveled in that direction suddenly huge splashes could be seen erupting from the waters surface along with a beautiful humpback whale. This magnificent humpback breached again and again. Jumping up and turning in the air only to come back crashing down with a fantastic splash! It jumped, inverted breached and leaped again and again, so many times I lost count after the 17th. It then seemed to be a bit worn out by all that excess effort and so decided to rest and slowly come up to the water surface for a few breaths and only occasionally going for a deeper dive raising its magnificent tail into the air. This was a fairly small individual being only 11-12 meters long approximately. The humpback showed itself beautifully you could follow it under the waters surface and watch as it came up for breath only 30 meters away! After some truly spectacular surface sequences we turned and started the long journey back to Reykjavík, we got back about 20 minutes late but I´m pretty sure no one minded as we had such an amazing encounter. 

- Tess Hudson

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: A fantastic weather greeted us as we left the harbour and started sailing the quiet waters of Faxafloi. It didn't take us long to notice a pod of four to five harbour porpoises. Like often the small cetaceans were quite shy and elusive so we didn´t stay too long around them. Instead we kept sailing toward the West and very soon we encountered a minke whale. The animal was pretty busy feeding and didn´t really pay much attention to us. It allowed us to remain with it for quite a long time before heading even further out. We had been sailing for a while we noticed an impressive splash of water in the distance, a humpback whale had just been breaching out of the water. Once we reached the whale we could follow it nicely as it was traveling to the South, spending most of its time at the surface. Since this last whale was pretty far from the harbour it took us longer to head back than usual but with such a nice weather it was easily enjoyable.

- Rémi Bigonneau

Bird species seen on today's tour include: northern fulmar, atlantic puffin, arctic tern, lesser black-backed gull, northern gannet, common guillemot, artic skua, kittiwake & eider duck.