FRIDAY, 15 JULY 2016

Status: RUNNING

We are sailing out from the Old Harbour in Reykjavik today. The wind is coming from the East, around 8-13m/s, and there will be movement on the boat.

Tour at 20:30

Report from Eldey: The sea conditions were ideal on this tour. Also the weather gave us a break from the morning tours with very weak winds and great visibility. We´d heard from previous tours there were some cetaceans far in the bay so we headed down there as fast as possible. On the way to Akranes we saw our first cetaceans: white-beaked dolphins! At least two pods of 4 individuals each. I could see also 2 calves in the group. They were super excited and started leaping (jumping next to the water) non stop. After 10 minutes of looking at these animals we decided to keep looking for more in the bay. After 5 minutes we saw our first minke whale! this one looked like it was a traveller. We could see it about 6 times surfacing and then it was gone. As it got harder and harder to see this one individual we went out to find more friendly ones. It did not take long! we saw other 2 pods of white-beaked dolphins. There were at least 10 individuals. We could see at least 4 of them breaching!unbelievable! On our way back to the harbour we found 2 more minke whales. They were swimming really close to the boat and one of them was checking us out too!! An amazing experience for everyone onboard!

- Jorge Pascual

Tour at 17:00

Report from Eldey: The weather was much better than it had been and we were feeling optimistic. The captain had heard about a humpback whale pretty far out so we set course to go straight to were it was last seen. A couple of harbour porpoises passed us on our way but they were very elusive so we didn't stop for them. After a while we also spotted a minke whale which we enjoyed as we went further out. When we got to the humpback whale it turned out there were two more about a kilometer away and all three of them were in front of us so we could watch them all. The one that was closer then came within 30 meters on our side so everyone got a good look at it. It was making it easy for us to take pictures as well because it was spending a lot of time at the surface and always fluking when it went for deeper dives so we were able to take pictures of the fluke. It didn't even spend a long time under water when it went for deeper dives, it was more like it was just showing off it's beautiful fluke. A nice tour with three species of cetaceans!

- Bryndís Ösp

Tour at 14:00

Report from Elding: After our morning tour we were still a bit disappointed - but determined to make the afternoon trip a success. And once again Faxaflói proved to be full of surprises. We hadn't even dared to dream of the tour we ended up experiencing! Heading out into the bay we discovered that the wind had died down quite a bit and there was almost no swell. While scanning the sea surface intently we suddenly saw a few dark dorsal fins in the waves - we had found a small pod of white-beaked dolphins! There seemed to be three individuals surfacing together. Sometimes they moved away from us and other times they seemed quite curious. It was amazing to see their prettily patterned bodies shimmer through the water as they were moving right underneath the surface of the water - they even passed right in front and underneath our bow!! After watching the dolphins for a good while we decided to try our luck and head further out into the bay. And it was more than worth it! We managed to see not just one, but two humpback whales. They were doing very short dives, showing us their flukes a lot and nicely illustrating how the pattern on the underside can be used for identifying the individual animals. As we were already late, we unfortunately had to head back after watching the whales for a bit longer. The rain had stopped and we enjoyed the sail back to harbour after this amazing afternoon tour.

- Linda Rudin

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: We sailed out with a grey sky and quite a bit of rain. But luckily the rain stopped quickly and because there was not a lot of wind it actually felt quite warm outside. After about 1,5 hours of sailing we encountered a pod of 4 white beaked dolphins. We managed to see the animals surfacing several times and all the passengers got a good look at them. While watching the dolphins we spotted a minke whale further in the distance. This minke whale gave us quite a challenge, moving directions all the time. But everybody managed to see it despite it being a bit sneaky. While watching the minke whale we had a porpoising harbour porpoise coming very near our boat, this was very nice because often these animals are quite elusive but now everyone on the outside decks managed to see the animal. To make the tour even better we also spotted a humpback whale. The animal came close to the boat and showed its amazing fluke several times.All in all an amazing tour during which we encountered all 4 species in the bay!

-Anouk

Tour at 10:00

Report from Elding: It was a very blustery start to the trip as we headed out of the harbour but as we made our way south the sea conditions were much better and we had a smooth ride with fairly good sighting conditions. Despite our efforts to find cetaceans, unfortunately we were unable to see any. We then headed north and after a while we encountered a number of flocks of feeding sea birds. We saw a number of sea bird species close to the boat much to the delight of any birders we had on board. However, the sea conditions weren´t as favourable as we headed north which made our search a little more difficult due to the numerous whitecaps. A few passengers were able to catch a brief glimpse of what was probably a minke whale but it did not appear again for the sighting to be confirmed or enjoyed by the other passengers. It was disappointing not to see any cetaceans, not just for the passengers but the crew as well, but it happens occasionally. These are wild animals after all! Towards the end of the tour we gave out complimentary tickets to the passengers who we very much look forward to joining us again on a more successful tour.

- Julia Benson 

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: We were expecting a strong wind blowing from the East, so we got everybody on board ready with overalls and seasickness pills. But for most of our trip we were surprisingly warm ! And the sea was calm as well. Every thing was set for a fine whale watching time, unfortunately luck was not on our side. We covered a wide area in the bay, going in a big circle, but no matter how carefully we watched around the boat, nothing much was to be found. We came across 2 harbour porpoises, but they surfaced only twice and disappeared right away. As we could not show whales to our passengers, we offered them complimentary tickets so they can come for another try within the next 2 years. We hope that everyone at least enjoyed the nice ride and could learn a little bit more about the whales. Better luck next time !

- Guillaume Calcagni

Bird species seen on today's tour include: kittiwake, arctic tern, atlantic puffin, common guillemot, greater black-backed gull, arctic skua, northern gannet, northern fulmar, black-headed gull