Sunday, 17 July 2016

Tour at 20:30

Report from Elding: We sailed out from the old harbour, in what seemed to be one of te most beautiful nights we have seen so far in this summer in the Faxa bay. The marvelous midnight sun was warming the almost crystal clear waters. Just about 30 minutes after our departure we spotted the first minke whale, a little bit far away though. We stayed in the area for a while, waiting for this sneaky animal to show up again, but nothing happened. Suddenly, we spotted not only one but two of this species swimming about 200 m away from each other in the same direction. We got closer to the first one, and we stayed with the animal for a while seems it didn't seemed to be disturbed by our presence. Then we resumed our travel, sailing just only a few kilometers away from this minky when we encountered a humpback whale feeding on the surface of the water. This individual also gift us with a couple of lunge feedings, a particular behaviour in which the animal shows most of the head while he approaches to feed on the fishes that are swimming close to the surface. To end this beautiful trip, we encountered a small pod of 5-7 white beaked dolphins. they accompanied us in our way back home, with the red sun shining on the horizon and Bjarni, our beloved troubadour singing some melancholic songs. A magnificent romantic ending for this wonderful trip.

- Alberto Alejandro

Tour at 17:00

Report from Eldey: When we were sailing out this early evening, the conditions continued to be almost ideal for whale watching, very calm sea and slightly overcast. It was also quite warm so that only a few passengers made use of our overalls. We decided to head straight out into the direction of a humpback whale we had seen earlier and soon found that curious individual. Next to that we also spotted a minke whale only a hundred meters away from the other marine mammal. The humpback came up quite regularly and close to the boat so that we could enjoy its presence for over half an hour. One of the highlights of this trip was seeing the humpback spyhop only a few meters away from the boat as if saying 'hi' to us and many passengers actually waved back. Then we sailed further out into the bay to look for more wildlife and almost immediately found a minke whale. Everybody could get very nice views and pictures of the minke, but then saw some big splashes in the close distance. As it turned out it was the humpback whale breaching first in slow motion and then breaching three times. What an incredible thing to see! After that we enjoyed another minke whale and a small pod of 2-3 harbour porpoises before it was time for us to head back. On our way to Reykjavik we saw 2 more minke whales and 3 harbour porpoises. We had fantastic hours out at sea.

- Barbara Neubarth

Tour at 14:00

Report from Elding: Good weather conditions from the morning continued during this tour. Flat sea on a sunny day made the spotting conditions easier. Very soon after leaving the harbour, we started heading to the area where we heard the humpback whale has been seen. By the time we approached, all other whale watching boats left the area. We slowed down completely letting the animal to choose how close it wants to come to us. It was one very relaxed humpback whale, surfacing few times in a row, very slowly, and going on just short shallow dives, enabling us to enjoy it's company for long time. After awhile, it changed it's traveling direction, seemed like it's going away from us, so we taught to leave this individual, but then, suddenly, it changed it's direction and came straight toward us, checking us out! Very slowly, surfacing with its full head above the sea surface just few meters away and then dived under our boat and surfaced just few meters away on the opposite side! It did this once again and in one moment, suddenly, it surfaced just next to the boat, showing the left side of it's full body just on the sea surface, even touched the boat with its flukes! It was completely incredible and unexpected! Amazing! Although this individual was showing that our presence obviously doesn't bother it, we left it after about 30-40 minutes, to try to find some other wild cetaceans. Soon, one of the passengers spotted a pod of white-beaked dolphins. It was a pod of 6 - 8 mother-calf pairs + one single adult individual, which was always swimming between us and the rest of the pod, like it's keeping us on the safe distance from the pod. As we approached this pod very slowly and carefully, they weren't showing signs of being disturbed, and even though they've had calves, kept traveling slowly and pretty close to our boat so we all had a great view of them and could take nice photos. Two of the calves were very small, newborns, so small, they were having trouble of keeping up with the rest of the pod, and one of them was surfacing with it's full (tiny) body above the sea surface. Very cute to watch! In some point one of the calves started breaching, and it did it few times! We decided to leave this pod to try to find other animals. As we were sailing away, we were still enjoying in the view of the dolphins and we saw the same calf jumping few more times in the distance. Soon after this nice encounter, we spotted a minke whale in the distance. Once we arrived in the area, we stopped the boat, but there were no signs of a whale for a while...Just at the moment we realized we are running out of time, and we'll have to start heading back to the harbour, a minke whale surfaced around 400 meters from our boat! It was a smaller individual, surfacing 5 times in a row before going on a deeper dive. We saw it surfacing 3 times before starting to go back to the harbor. As we turned the boat toward the port, we spotted another minke whale, 200- 300 meters away. It was going in an opposite direction so we were able to see it few times, while it was passing by. On our way back, very close to the harbour, a humpback whale surfaced in front of us! It was also very relaxed, slowly traveling individual. We stayed with it awhile, enjoying in the sound of it's blow/breathing and a close view of it. It was close enough we could see its long white pectoral fins under the surface. Unfortunately, we ran out of time and had to go back to the port, but with big smiles on our faces! What a great tour!

-Tena Šarčević   

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: In the afternoon, we started heading straight back to the area where we saw the humpback whale on the earlier tour. There were two other whale watching boats out as well, going different routes to look for cetaceans. Before we reached the area far out, we got news from one of them that they had found a humpback whale quite close to sure so that we decided to turn around and also go for this animal. On the way we saw 3-4 harbour porpoises traveling along the side of the boat creating a lot of small splashes. As we were getting closer, we first saw a big blow before seeing the actual animal, the dark back and the tail being raised above the surface. In the beginning, the humpback seemed to be very relaxed, almost a bit sleepy. However, it suddenly got really curious; it turned around and totally checked out anther boat that was about 120 m away from us. It even raised its head out of the water at some point to have a proper look at the passengers - absolutely incredible. Then it turned around again and started to traveling towards another area, finally also showing its fluke again! The perfect goodbye for us, so we left the animal in peace to look for something else. However, a minke whale that was spotted was very elusive and didn't show up again so that we started to make our way back to the harbour as we were running out of time. Since the humpback whale showed us such cool interaction behaviour, we sailed back with smiles on our faces!

- Hanna Michel

Tour at 10:00

Report from Elding: The weather for this mornings tour made for perfect spotting conditions - with flat calm seas and dry cloudy skies - enabling us to see for miles. Within barely 25 minutes we came upon our first marine mammal in the bay - the minke whale. Its dark back and sickle-shaped dorsal fin were highly visible amongst the still waters and we were able to watch this animal surface three times within 100 m of the boat. As this animal re-appeared again only 100 m away, another minke whale surfaced almost simultaneously with this individual a further 200 m away against the backdrop of Mount Esja. We stayed with these animals for a further 15 minutes before heading further out into the bay where news reached us that a humpback whale was in the area. In no time at all we had reached the last known whereabouts of the Humpback whales location and sure enough we witnessed the large blow from the animal less than 800 m away...and a fluke just visible on the horizon! As we approached this animal we witnessed it surface and dive on numerous occasions before going on a deeper dive with a flash of its glorious tail fluke! The time between re-surfacing was very short and we were lucky enough to slowly cruise along with this animal as it travelled in the bay. We watched this animal surface and dive for 30 minutes and within less than 20 m of the boat! This was an incredibly close encounter and it was very rare to be able to simply watch this animal surface alongside the boat for such a long time. We could even see the animals large form hovering just beneath the waters surface, with it's giant white pectoral fins by its side! As we left this animal to head further out into the bay the animal seemingly caught up with us and we could once again appreciate the full majestic nature of this humpback whale. As we watched it surface and dive and slowly began to head back towards Reykjavik we were greeted with a farewell billow of it's large tail fluke. We had an enjoyable sail back towards the harbour in what was a great close encounter with these 2 species of whales.    

- Darcy Philpott

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: Once again, another beautiful day out on the water and it only got better throughout the day. We got the top 4 species on this tour; humpback whale, minke whale, white-beaked dolphins and harbour porpoises. The first was a minke whale that seemed very relaxed and came close many times, then a pod of 5-6 white-beaked dolphins, these were not in a whale watching mood and perhaps being very protective of their young. We left these in peace. After some searching we got word of a humpback whale and as I was just telling the passengers about why they breach and that the humpback is the most likely whale to breach but does not happen all the time, it breached right in front of us!! Incredible...talk about timing. The humpback only did it once but luckily everyone was looking in the right direction. It was also so cute to see the small harbour porpoises, only 2 or 3 trying to catch up with the humpback. Don’t know if they managed. Perfect. It was hard to leave, but leave we must. On the way home we got to see the dolphins again but unfortunately time had run out so we couldn’t spend long but they were more relaxed nd passengers got a great view. Another awesome morning in Faxafloi.

Megan Whittaker

Bird species seen on today's tours include: northern gannet, northern fulmar, arctic tern, common guillemot, Atlantic puffin, kittiwake, lesser-black-backed gull, black-headed gull, Arctic skua.