SUNDAY, 16 OCTOBER 2016

Status: RUNNING

We are going out from the Old harbour in Reykjavik today for our whale watching tours. It is relatively calm outside, the wind is coming from the North-East and is 3 m/s. Please contact our office via telephone +354 5195000 if you want to join us for any of todays tours.

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: The awesome sea conditions continued today and made it a beautiful to be out at sea again even though the cold reminded us that it's not June anymore. Like yesterday, there were still plenty of white-beaked dolphins in the Bay today, we encountered the first of them after about 45 min of sailing. It was a very relaxed group of 4 individuals that stayed with us for a while with many other dolphins visible further in the distance. We went from this group to another one that was a bit more active and consisted of 6 individuals. They were leaping out of the water and started bow-riding, they surfaced all around the boat. Like yesterday, it's not easy to come up with an estimation of the total number of dolphins, I would say at least 35-40. When we moved on to find something else, we caught the attention of another group of dolphins that headed towards us and also started bow-riding. The white-beaked dolphins rule Faxa Bay at the moment. In these conditions it wasn't difficult to also find a minke whale, it must have been at least 4 individuals we saw on the tour. In the beginning, it was a bit tricky to get closer to one of them but then it surfaced a few times just about 70 m away from us and gave us a nice look before we returned to the harbour. 

- Hanna Michel

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: A wonderful tour to be out on the Icelandic seas. The skies were colourful and the cloud formations beautiful, the sea was also calm, almost like a mirror. It took us about 30 minutes before passengers started to point and shout, a pod of about 4 harbour porpoises, another passenger came to tell me. Always great to get the passengers to help spot these fast surfacing cetaceans, as soon as we stopped they were gone and so we continued as well. After another 20 minutes we found a minke whale and a pod of 5-7 white-beaked dolphins, they were very scattered and traveled fast. We kept up with them for a while and then decided to leave them in peace. We then found another minke whale and were very happy to announce that it was a minke whale called 'Humpie' an individual we have seen every year since 2011. Great to see that Humpie survived another whaling year. We left humpie and found 2-3 harbour porpoises and two more minke whales traveling together, one called 'Danny Boy' first catalogued in 2013. A first I thought it was another well known minke whale called Haski but on closer inspection when I got home I saw it was actually Danny Boy and the other we could not ID. We watched them for a few surfaces and then sailed home, saw another pod of 4-6 white-beaked dolphins in teh distance as we did so. An awesome afternoon to be out on Faxa Bay. 

- Megan Whittaker

Bird species seen on todays tours include: northern gannet, lesser black-backed gull, Iceland gull, kittiwake, glaucous gull, cormorant, eider duck, and razorbill.