Saturday, 27 May 2017

Tour at 17:00

Report from Eldey: While mostly cloudy, sea conditions were great with minimal swell height. Some puffins and arctic terns joined us on our way out to our main sighting area and after about an hour / hour and a half we spotted 2 harbour porpoises however they remained elusive after two to three surfaces. Further out we spotted a minke whale around 300-400m from the boat and most likely a humpback whale about 1km ahead of us. The minke surfaced about two times and remained unseen for lots of the passengers, so we sailed on hoping to get a better look at the humpback. We were able to spot the humpback again about 100m away from the boat, but it went for a deepdive and we couldn´t find it for another half hour. After another elusive sighting we were close to our time to return to the harbour. About ten minutes before we had to turn around, the humpback magically popped up at the back-left of the boat about 5-10m away. It was swimming between us and the RIBs from Whale Safari and everyone got to take a look at this gentle giant. It was moving calmly around us and a truely amaizing experience for everyone on board. 

- Friedrich Rittner

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: This afternoon we had an amazing trip. On our way out, we had lots of seabird activity and we could see the gannets and arctic terns swooping down to catch fish. When we were right in the middle of a flock, we all of a sudden saw the blow of a humpback whale! The whale was very active and put on an amazing show for us, with multiple peduncle throws, head slaps and breaches. We truly got to appreciate the acrobatic capabilities of this species as the animal managed to corkscrew its body round during a breach. This whale is the same individual we have seen in multiple trips this past few days, and we've decided to name it Gretar, after our engineer on board because he's the one who spotted the whale yesterday. Just before turning back we also got to see 3 white-beaked dolphins and about 6 harbour porpoises. All in all, this was just an incredible trip to add to the day!

- Rachel Pool

Tour at 9:00

Report from Eldey: This morning couldn't start better for us: we spotted our first animals, a pod of 5 - 7 White-beaked dolphins, just 15 minutes after leaving harbour - next to the Lighthouse Grotta. Dolphins were quite elusive, often disappearing under the water but every time when we were about to go further,  animals were appearing close to us. Not long later, in the flock of Puffins we spotted a Minke Whale. There was a few of this whales in the area so it wasn't easy to decided for which individual look for. With Minke's we found a lot of Harbour Porpoises, which were swimming around us during all rest of the tour. Later on we were having an unexpected encounter with a couple of Minke Whales! Two of them appear just in front of our boat, so everybody could smell their stinky breath but also we seen their withe patches on flippers when they went for diving under our vessel. We had another amazing day watching wildlife in the Faxa bay!

- Ewa Malinowska

Bird species seen on today's tours include: Northern Gannet, Northern Fulmar, Lesser Black-Backed Gull, Hittiwake, Arctic tern, Atlantic puffin, Common Guillemot, Razorbill, Eider ducks,Black-headed gull

Status: RUNNING

We are sailing out from the Old Harbour in Reykjavik today. It is a sunny and warm day with little to no wind. Hopefully you can all join us to see these magnificent giants in their natural habitat.