Tour at 20:30
Report from Elding: Sailing out, sea conditions were quite good with low swell height, although we had some fog later on as well as some light rain. We were sailing towards an area where other boats had spotted some minke whales as well as a humpback whale, so we were confident to find something. Unfortunately, this trip turned out to be quite difficult in terms of spotting cetaceans. We spotted a humpback whale about an hour into the trip, however only saw two blows and then again its back from a distance. This humpback seemed to be travelling through and we could not get a better look at it. A little later into the trip we spotted a minke whale, also relatively far away. The closest it got to the boat was between 100 and 150 meters and also didn´t show much of itself. On our way back, we spotted a pod of about 5 white-beaked dolphins, although even they seemed to be passing through and didn´t give us much of an opportunity to watch them closely. At the end of the tour, Bjarnis´ live perfomance was the highlight of our night and we handed out complementary tickets for everyone at the end.
- Friedrich Rittner
Tour at 17:00
Report from Eldey: Evening tour was very pleasant, finally without fog we could enjoy sunny weather. At the beginning it was quiet and calm, without any wildlife activity, just with puffins and arctic terns around. We received a call from other boats about blow, but at the place we saw just few vessels waiting without success for animal to surface. Instead of staying there we decided to go further. It was a great decision because soon we saw huge blow and we found a humpback whale. There was also plenty of feeding birds, flying around, making flocks and fishing. We were trying to use these birds to guess where the whale is, but instead of humpback we found minke whales! About 3 to 5 whales were also feeding in the same area but this animals were hard to follow. They were coming to the surface very quick and mostly once between dives. Humpback was also very active, swimming fast, surfacing for short moments, changing directions but anyway, we still get very close look at this magnificent animal.
- Ewa Malinowska
Tour at 14:00
Report from Hafsulan: Sailing out, we had fairly good conditions, although a little bit of fog. After reaching our main sighting area, we were still sailing towards a congregation of whale watching boats, who had spotted a humpback whale. Moving towards these boats, we spotted a big blow on our left and had actually found a humpback whale on our own! As we turn left to get a little bit closer to where we had seen this humpback whale, we even spotted a minke whale as well, about 200m from the boat. Unfortunately this minke did not show up again and we had no further sightings of minkes on this tour. We were trying to get a better look at the humpback and stayed with this individual for a while, although long dives made it a little bit difficult to predict where it would resurface and after a while we continued to search the area. Towards the end of our tour, the whale watching boat Lilja had spotted a humpback whale as well as some white-beaked dolphins, so we decided to join them and look for these animals. After a while scanning the area, we spotted a single humpback surfacing with some white-beaked dolphins around it. This was very interesting to see! The dolphins were clearly staying with the humpback and the humpback never surfaced by itself. We didn´t quite know what to make of it, but it was peculiar. Sometimes the dolphins surfaced without the humpback, but when they did, it was not the whole pod (pod size was about 5 maybe 6). After observing this individual for a while and again having to wait for quite some time during long dives, we had to return to Reykjavik. It would have been nice to see more individuals, but overall sighting success was good and we got to see three different species of cetacean.
- Friedrich Rittner
Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey: It is astonishing how quickly the weather can change in this country. The wind had picked up a lot since this morning, it was quite a bit colder and the sea conditions were still okay but far from being as smooth as they were this morning. For the first 45-50 minutes of sailing out, we were surrounded by a thick layer of fog making it difficult to spot anything. However, then we came across a minke whale! We saw it a few times but moved on when the animal went for a long dive. Further out we saw a large flock of feeding birds and just when we were about to move on, a humpback whale surfaced a couple of hundred meters away from us. We saw it once more and another time after a deep dive, but then it stayed under water for a long time. However,while waiting for it, we saw a few big splashes about 1 km away from us: There was another humpback whale throwing its tail around, also called peduncling or peduncle throw. It was very cool to see, it did this a few times while we were heading over to this apparently more active animal. Unfortunately, the humpback whale stopped peduncling and then never returned to the surface. Inbetween we also saw 2-3 more minke whales but they did not really show themselves very well either and were difficult to see. While waiting for the second humpback to resurface, another boat close to us spotted a group of 3 white-beaked dolphins. And these dolphins were very nice to all of us, kinda a compensation for the uncooperative whales. They moved around a lot so everyone could see them and also came very close towards our boat. And then we could also see them bow-riding in front of another boat. We were able to spend a few minutes with the dolphins and then, a few minutes after leaving the dolphins, we finally found a very nice minke whale. It surfaced just 50 m away from us and then we could see it a few times in a row before starting to head back home.
- Hanna Michel
Tour at 10:00
Report from Hafsulan: Today we have had a beautiful day! As soon as we arrived to the harbour all of us felt that today was going to be a wonderful day, it was sunny and the temperature for icelandic standards was pretty high, the only but was a persistent mist over half of Faxafloi which made the trip more mysterious and interesting. We sailed out of the bay enjoying this good weather to one of our main spotting areas. When we arrived there we could see big flocks of birds over a big extension so we stopped and took a look. The first thing we were able to see was an amazing minke whale lunge feeding! Sandeels were jumping around trying to run away for our beloved whale but she was relentless. In the mean time, more minke whales join to the party and we spotted up to 3 individuals in the area. After enjoying them for a while, we went further out but the fog started to following us like in a horror movie, it was a little bit challenging whale-watching today but we got many surprises such as puffins and seabirds coming from nowehere and a lovely pod of 4-5 white-beaked dolphins which were traveling around without any hurries. In the way back we were delighted by a pleasant weather and a calm sea, so it was excellent whale-watching experience.
-Rodrigo A, Martinez Catalan
Tour at 09:00
Report from Eldey: What a nice day today! And what a great start of the tour as we came across a humpback whale after just half an hour, a lot closer to shore than what we usually expect. It stayed underwater for about 10 min between the dives, but one it surfaced right in front of us, maybe 5 m away, and in the end we also saw a nice fluke-up that everyone got a look at. After some time of sailing out we came to an area with a group of 4 white-beaked dolphins spotted by another boat. We had to be a bit patient to come closer to them, but then we watched them very close to us and one of them even jumping out of the water 15-20 times. Awesome dolphins! A few minutes later we also saw a minke whale! It didn't stay underwater for a long time but coming up very frequently and many times in a row, sometimes even going in circles. There were also 2-3 more minke whales surfacing in the distance. On our way back, we kept our eyes open in case the humpback whale was still close to shore but instead we saw a group of 7-8 harbour porpoises that were swimming around us a few times and then heading off at a high speed. After that, we enjoyed the smooth sailing back to the harbour on this summer day!
- Hanna Michel
Bird species seen on ton day's tours include: northern gannet, northern fulmar, common guillemot, atlantic puffin, arctic skua, arctic tern, eider duck, cormorant, lesser black-backed gull and black-legged kittiwake.
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