Tour at 17:00
Report from Eldey: A light rain and a little bit of wind were our welcoming for our last tour of the day. Nonetheless, as soon as we left the harbour the weather improved and we could enjoyed the views from the whole bay of Faxa. Soon, we found a small pod of 6-8 white-beaked dolphins, they were swimming quietly and without any hurries. They were so close to us that we were able to identify one of the individuals: she was Julie and it was first spotted in the bay in 2010, so she is still with us! After a while we decided to test our luck and find more cetaceans. And lucky us! A minke whale appeared but she was quite elusive so we left the area and we tried to look for them further. In this case, we used our smell-senses to locate another minke whale, we could clearly feel its smelly breath and we followed the track seeing her for a while surface from now and then. As a curious detail, we saw a short-eared owl in the middle of the ocean, chased by two arctic terns, not a common sighting! We discovered more secrets of Faxafloi and we enjoyed a smooth ride home.
-Rodrigo A. Martinez Catalan
Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey: Again the water was nice and calm with almost no wind. Although the sky was overcast, the visibility was great. It was the harbour porpoises that greeted us again. Once we had reached a far distance from the harbour, we saw many flocks of birds feeding and thus stayed in the area to watch for marine mammals. As assumed, we spotted an awesome group of at least 8 white-beaked dolphins that were just great!! They jumped and came right up to the boat, turning to their sides to watch us. So much for us whale watching, it was them human watching. We stayed with them for over 30 minutes until we spotted 2 minke whales. They surfaced a few times but were rather elusive. On our way back we again spotted two minke whales traveling. Although they were elusive as well, the experience we had with the dolphins left everyone glowing with joy!
- Rodrigo A. Martinez Catalan
Tour at 9:00
Report from Eldey: We started out into a fairly flat bay with the wind behind us. After about one hour, everything just started happening at once! It only started out with 3 harbour porpoises passing by when we had our first minke whale surface in front of the boat. With it were 6 white-beaked dolphins that stayed with us for about half an hour, coming close to the bow and surfacing slowly so everyone could get a good look. Once we turned to leave them, not only did we have more harbour porpoises, but 2 minke whales! They were obviously feeding as they were changing directions quiet frequently. As we were on the lookout for them to surface again, a humpback whale came up really close and traveled around the boat for a good 15 minutes. On our way back we had another nice group of 3-4 harbour porpoises and saw 2 more minke whales. What an amazing trip with 4 species all within one hour!!
- Sabrina Voswinkel
Birds seen on this trip: Atlantic Puffin, Arctic Tern, Common Guillemot, Northern Fulmar, Black-backed Gull, Herring Gull, Eider Duck, Atlantic Gannet.
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