FRIDAY, 8 DECEMBER 2017

Status: RUNNING

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: What a beautiful day! It was a real winter wonderland out in the bay. Very cold conditions with an atmospheric temperatures -6 degrees Celsius brrr! luckily it was not very windy, just 2-3 m/s from the north. So we dressed up warm, bought ourselves a hot chocolate and off for our ocean adventure we went. After about 50 mins, as the sun was lowering in the sky and creating a beautiful warm glow over the mountains, we found a large flock of seabirds, seagulls mainly, and white-beaked dolphins. At first there seemed to be only about 4 individuals that were circling the birds that were probably sitting above a big shoal of fish. It was so fascinating to watch the dolphins strategically work together to get the fish where they wanted, of course we could not see what was going on under the water but probably tail slaps created shock waves that stunned the fish for easy pickings. As this was going on, the birds all flew up in a rush and scattered. This was over quickly and the dolphins moved on, slowly traveling away and later playing under the bow of our boat. We recognized one of these dolphins to be one of our regulars ´Conor´ an awesome white-beaked dolphin that has entertained us often since 2013. We went looking for other species but nothing could have been as fun to watch as the dolphins. In the end other dolphin pods gathered together and at least 10-15 individuals were seen thoughout the tour. As a marine biologist these dolphins are always interesting to watch as there is not much understood about the species. Awesome day!.

- Megan Whitaker

Bird species seen on today's tour include: eider ducks, common guillemots, icelandic gulls, glaucous gull, great cormorants, black-headed gulls, greater black-backed gulls.

We are sailing from the Old Harbour in Reykjavik on a beautiful but cold day. There is little to no wind but if you are sensitive to motion sickness we do have seasickness tablets free of charge at the ticket office. Hope you are able to join us in our search of these magnificent animals.