Tour at 20:30
Report from Elding: What a wonderful night we had out in the Faxafloi! We started the show with a magnificent humpback whale feeding like crazy, both in the bottom and in the surface! It was absolutely amazing watching the animal throwing its body over the surface to catch the fishes. We were spending already half an hour with the individual when a second humpback whale approached and fed as well. We gave a break to the first one and followed the second individual, but in the meantime we saw 5-6 minke whales surfacing in the distance, and feeding as well. We were a little bit disappointed with them though, since they were always quite far away. But it changed all in a sudden when one minke whale surfaced 3 m away from our boat! I personally haven't seen a minke whale so close before, so I will for sure retain this tour in my memory! After that one more humpback whale was feeding nearby a few big flock of birds. We got to se at least once a lunge feeding and, when it finished, it also gave us a tail slapping as a goodbye present! On the way back our troubadour lived up the return, while we were able to catch a few splashes on our back, far away in the distance, that probably were caused by a few dolphins jumping. I'm quite sure tomorrow will be a very interesting day in the bay!
- Alberto Alejandro
Tour at 17:00
Report from Eldey: The skies were both worrying and yet beautiful. It looked definite that we would be rained on this toru as the rain could be seen in the distance and in the direction we needed to go. Yet, the colours, sun rays, patterns and even watching the rain in the distance was all very beautiful and picturesque. We prepared ourselves for the rain and headed out into the bay. Took us roughly an hour to get to an area full of life. We encountered at least 4-5 minke whales, 3 humpback whales: including 'Daisy' a humpback whale from our catalogue, 3 pods of white-beaked dolphins (4 or 5 animals in the first pod on the way out, another after leaving the humpback of about 7-9 and a smaller pod of about 3-4 on the way home. Whilst we were watching a pod of dolphins on one side of the boat, on the other a pod of harbour porpoises, 3-4 individuals. playing in the waves. The birdlife was also incredible, massive flocks of birds, seagulls mainly. On the way home we got to see also a vibrant rainbow.
- Megan Whittaker
Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey: The afternoon trip started in rain, but it was just typical Icelandic day so every 5 minutes we had different weather and most of the time it was sunny. We knew were to go so with full speed we ran in the area where we might see a whale. On the way we passed by a minke whale, but this individual was not what we were looking for. Finally we found a humpback whale, at it was whale named Daisy! We knew Daisy since March 2016 and we had seen it previously last September. Whale allowed us to get very close and even did a spy hop! Who was watching who? While we were waiting for a humpback to surface we could seen more minke whales feeding in the area. When it get crowdy with boats around this whale, we went further to enjoy presence of dolphins. Pod of 4 white-beaked dolphins stayed with us for around 30 minutes till it was a time to slowly go back home. On the way we saw one harbour porpoise jumping with the waves. Our big 4 cetaceans had been seen on this tour!
- Ewa Malinowska
Tour at 10:00
Report from Hafsúlan: With a little bit of rain that stopped as soon as we were a bit further out in the Bay, we sailing in to Faxaflói today on our search for whales, dolphins and porpoises. It took us a while to find our first whale but after about an hour or so, we came across our first minke whale! We spent a short while with it, waiting for it to surface a few more times and then we moved on, just to find another minke whale a few minutes later. We got to see the second individual a couple of times as well and decided to head further out again. We sailed for some time, when we saw a large black back far away in the distance - a humpback whale! After heading close to where we had seen this whale, we waited for it to come up to the surface and indeed saw it surfacing in front of us not very far away! We managed to get a bit closer and so a nice fluke-up from this animal as it went for a dive. Just a short while later, the humpback whale caught us all by surprise: It jumped out of the water right in front of the boat where everyone had been waiting for it to resurface - perfect timing! Then we followed it for a while as it was heading towards Reykjavík until there were two flocks of birds that the humpback whale started feeding under, and we could watch it just 50 m away from us! A great humpback whale that gave us a pretty good tour.
- Hanna Michel
Tour at 09:00
Report from Eldey: We started our tour today with an overcast sky and a few threatening rain clouds, we were lucky that the rain stayed off for the whole tour. Sea conditions were good, very little wind but some residual swell the did cause a few green faces by the end. Mostly the incredible and diverse wildlife kept us entertained and our minds of the boat movements. We were very lucky on this tour with at least 10-15 minke whales both close and far, feeding and travelling. We also found a playful and feeding white-beaked dolphins, a pod of 7-10. They were probably the highlight of the tour, surfacing just meters from the boat and surfing in our wakes. If that was ot enough we also saw 2 pods of harbour porpoises with about 3-5 in each pod. Many flocks of birds were also showing our way to the whales, species listed at teh bottom of this page.
- Megan Whittaker
Birds seen on today's tour include: Eider ducks, Lesser black-backed gulls, great black-backed gulls, kittiwakes, fulmars, gannets, arctic terns, common guillemots, puffins, manx shearwaters, european storm petrels, arctic skuas.
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