Tour at 13:00
Report from Hafsulan: After a beautiful morning tour with many sightings, we were looking very forward to today's afternoon tour. Even though it started raining here and then, the sea was still calm and the wind not very strong. This time, it took us a bit longer until we spotted some Harbour Porpoises very close to our boat, which everyone enjoyed to watch for a while before they waved goodbye to us. We were very happy, when we spotted the back of a Minke Whale next to a flock of feeding birds that had caught our attention after some more minutes of sailing. Almost at the same time, we noticed the blow of another Minke Whale in about a kilometer distance and more Harbour Porpoises showed up close to the boat (about 15 in total). Even though we spotted 2 to 3 Minke Whales in this area, they behaved very shy and elusive, but that's nature and we have to accept what nature gives us. In deed, nature presented us a nice flock of feeding Arctic Terns very close to our boat and we were very happy to see that they have finally arrived in the bay. On our way back to Reykjavik, we stopped at Akurey to have a nice view on the seabirds on this island particularly the Atlantic Puffin. There were many puffins around Akurey and many of our passengers enjoyed taking pictures of these beautiful birds. One of our passengers even had birthday today - We saz "Happy Birthday" again and hope you enjoyed this nice afternoon tour!
Tour at 09:00
Report from Hafsulan: When we started sailing this morning from Reykjavik harbour, the sky was a bit clouded, but the wind was weak and the sea surface nice and calm - very good conditions for spotting whales so we were quite optimistic from the start! Since more and more Atlantic Puffins had arrived within the last two weeks, we decided to visit Akurey to have a closer look at them. Indeed, many puffins were swimming around and sitting on the island and it was very nice to see these cute birds so close. After enjoying the puffins, we headed out Faxa-bay for some minutes until we spotted a group of 3 to 5 Harbour Porpoises, which we enjoyed a lot. Since the sun came out here and there, the sunbeams did reflect very nicely on the porpoises'backs making it easier for us to spot them. Just a short moment later, our captain spotted a Minke Whale just a few hundred meters in front of our boat. As we went to where we had last seen it, the Minke Whale surfaced several times very close to our vessel Hafsulan. While enjoying this beautiful animal, we spotted at least two more individuals in the closer surroundings and also between 15 and 20 hHarbour Porpoises in total. This was a great morning with nice and calm seas and many close surfacings of Minke Whales and beautiful seabirds such as Atlantic Puffins, Northern Gannets and Guillemots just to name some of them.
Birds seen on today's tours: Atlantic Puffins, Northern Gannets, Red Shanks, Common Guillemots, Fulmars, Kittiwakes, Cormorants, Eider Ducks, Oystercatchers, Arctic Terns, Black-backed Gulls, Brent Geese
- Hendrik Schultz