Tour status 9:00, 10:00, 13:00, 14:00 and 17:00 : RUNNING
Tour at 17:00
Report from Eldey: Once again we left the harbour in high spirits as we have seen the cetaceans on several tours, we were also hopeful for this one. Going out a minke whale popped up further in distance but unfortunately vanished, so we continued our tour as we ended up in a prominent stinky cloud of whale breath. We stopped the boat and looked around but could not make out the culprit so decided to go on again as suddenly another minke surfaced, this time much closer to us. Unfortunately, this seemed to be the tour of the "sneaky minkes" and only 20% of our passengers got to see them. Still there where more cetaceans in the bay and so we finished up seeing around 20 white-beaked dolphins split over 3 pods. Especially the last pod put up a really nice show with their jumping funny calves. Some of the dolphins were so curious and came in for a real close up on us. What a lovely encounter!
- Sarah Kompatscher
Tour at 14:00
Report from Hafsulan: Beautiful afternoon, that´s the only way to describe our trip. As soon as we left the harbour, we were enjoying a nice sailing experience when we spotted a minke whale with 2-3 harbour porpoises around. Later on, we continued our trip to find a second minke whale, this time was our well-known "Shark", an individual seen since 2007. To round up the trip, an incredible pod of 10-12 white-beaked dolphin showed up, not only to pass through but to say hello while leaping and diving underneath us in a breathtaking experience.
-Rodrigo A. Martinez Catalan
Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey: The weather was better than in the morning when we left the harbour, nice change from the rain. Once we got further out the bay we could spot some cetaceans. Our first encounter was a pod of 5-7 white-beaked dolphins. They were a little shy and did not want to interact with the boat, so we left them be. Almost immediately we spotted another pod of dolphins! They were a lot more playful and came right up to the boat to check out these strange beings on the board. We saw a minke whale out in the distance and decided to go and have a closer look and leave the dolphins. On our way to the minke whale we got surrounded by dolphins that came to the boat and were bow riding, really awesome! We got to the minke and found out that there were two in the area. They surfaced a few time for us and sometimes close to the boat and we saw that one of them was Shark, a minke that has been seen every year since 2007. We headed back to harbour and on the way we saw a few other dolphins and minkes. Great tour with around 40- 50 dolphins and at least 4 minkes!
-Kolbrún Þóra Sverrisdóttir
Tour at 10:00
Report from Hafsulan: It´s great to start week like this: on the sea under calm weather and watching wildlife. We sailed for around 30 min till we found our first sighting. Minke whale came out of nowhere! Whale was feeding or just searching for food followed by noisy arctic terns. It was quite easy to watch this one as it stayed close to the surface. We saw some blow in the distance and splashes so we went to check it. It was a second minke whale but we couldn't´t watch it long as pod of 6 white-beaked dolphins took all our attention. Dolphins came to us by themselves and were playing along our boat, it was amazing! Later we went to check big flock of birds and we found 2-3 minke whales there, one of them was well known by us individual called “Shark”. Before we run out of the time we got to see 2 more minkes and plenty of puffins.
- Ewa Malinowska
Tour at 09:00
Report from Eldey: A calm but rainy start to the day. Overalls and hot chocolate were in need this morning but this of course this didn´t deter the animals. Minke whales were the first to pop up on this mornings tour but their behaviour was kinda strange, we saw at least 3 minke whales during the tour but all were ivery difficult to folliow, we hopeed that by travelling slowly through the area we would have maybe have a closer surface and luckily we did. The stars of the tour today were how ever the white-beaked dolphins. We found 3 different pods on this tour. first with 5-7 individuals, 2nd with 10-12 and the 3rd hard to see as they were furster away, maybe 4-6. They were great, playing under and around the boat, very playful. We all got some wonderful pictures.
- Megan Whittaker
Birds species seen today include: atlantic puffin, arctic tern, arctic skua, black-legged kittiwake, lesser black-backed gull, common guillemot, razorbill, northern fulmar, northern gannet, eider duck
We are sailing out from the Old Harbour in Reykjavik today. Sea conditions are are favorable but there could always be some movement on the boat and we do have free seasickness tablets at the office. Hope you are able to join us on our search for these magnificent animals in their natural environment.
- Image
- Image
