Tour status: RUNNING
Tour at 17:00
Report from Eldey: Our tour was accompanied by some light rain, but winds were not very strong and sea conditions were calm, too. The first sighting of the tour was a pod of 3-5 harbour porpoises. Unfortunately they were rather elusive, but they surfaced right in front of us, so a lot of passengers saw them. We kept going and came across 3 pods of white-beaked dolphins, in total about 13-15 individuals. They came close to the boat, swam underneath it, did bow riding and a lot of jumps around the boat! After this incredible encounter we moved further into the bay and found a minke whale. It surfaced a couple of times around the boat and once even very close to it. We lost it afterwards, but we found another one soon after. However, this individual was elusive as well. Still, we managed to see it a few times, before we started heading back to Reykjavík.
-Diana Besel
Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey: We started our rainy tour caught by a surprisingly close encounter with a minke whale, it was spotted as we were leaving the harbour. Once we continued our trip we saw many more of these fascinating animals, roughly 5-6 of them. Most of the minkes were quite busy feeding but the top encounter was with a mother-calf duo. The little one was very interested about our boat and it surfaced several times very close to our bow. Apart from whales, we were lucky to see two different pods of white beaked dolphins, a total of 9-10 individuals. The way back to the harbour was extremely peaceful as we had no signs of the south-westerlies winds that we had had previous days.
-Rodrigo A. Martinez Catalan
Tour at 9:00
Report from Eldey: We were sailing this morning under thick cover of clouds throughout a calm sea. Sky was full of northern gannets and we took it as a good omen. After 40 minutes we saw a minke whale. It was fast swimming type, heading in direction of feeding ground where we saw another individual of that species. Between them we had a very rare opportunity to take a good look at harbour porpoises. Later on we turned in the direction of white beaked dolphins. Pod of around 10 was feeding but we were patient and when they were done they came up very close to us to play around the boat. During encounter with dolphins we saw one more minke whale passing by and another one on the way back. 3 species of cetaceans in one morning!
- Ewa Malinowska
Bird species seen today include: northern gannet, great cormorant, northern fulmars, glaucous gull, great black backed gull, lesser black-backed gull, black legged kittiwake, whimbrel, common guillemot.
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