Wednesday, 27 April 2022

Today we will be operating on Þruma RIB for our 10:00 and 14:00 Premium Whale tours and on our lovely vessel Eldey for the 09:00 and 13:00 Classic Whale Watching tours. Make sure to dress appropriately for the tours as it is always colder on sea than on land.

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 09:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 10:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 14:00

 COVID-19: Keep in mind that passengers and crew are asked to ensure their own hygiene and safety at all times. Washing hands thoroughly with soap and using a hand sanitiser is advised.

Report from Elding: We couldn't have asked for better sea conditions this morning, no swell and hardly any wind. Around 40 minutes after we sailed out of the harbour, we had our first encounter. A large pod of harbour porpoises! They were scattered all around us and we were able to watch them speeding through the water for quite a while as we sailed past. This was only the start, not long after we saw our second species of the day, a humpback whale. This individual wasn't going anywhere fast. They were very relaxed at the surface, just taking it easy this Wednesday morning. We were able to watch it for a while as it surfaced close enough to the boat a few times that we could see its white pectoral fins through the water and gave us beautiful views of its white fluke. Once other boats started to arrive, we continued on with our tour and found more and more harbour porpoises! We also encountered a third species this morning, white-beaked dolphins. The first pod we encountered were swimming very fast through the water and didn't take much notice of us. However, once we started to head back to the harbour, we saw a second pod that was much more relaxed and even came up close to the boat to get a better look at us! An amazing end to the morning tour!

- Emily Erskine

Report from the Ribs: How lucky are we to have another glorious day in Faxafloi! The bay was full of life with three species seen on our morning adventures. The most numerous were the harbour porpoises who were seen in the hundreds. Small, triangular fins were seen breaking the mirror flat conditions and some were spotted logging, as they remained motionless floating with the dorsal side exposed. Next we encountered a pod of 4-5 white-beaked dolphins who were not in the mood to be watched. We approached slowly from behind and saw them nicely, but they showed no interest in our presence and continued about their business. The next sighting was the most special and is one of the best of the year thus far. We met a large humpback whale after seeing its fluke in the distance and once arriving in the area, was allowed to approach gently as the whale slipped into a mid morning slumber. The whale logged at the surface in a similar fashion to some of the porpoises, steadily rising and falling countless times for a breath. Once the whale awoke, it turned towards us, as if to check on the ones who were spying on their nap time and swam within 2-5 metres from our port side. It performed a small loop in order to face its original direction and lifted the fluke tall for a dive. When the humpback returned it resumed napping and we decided to leave the whale to sleep in peace. The entire encounter was spent in silence as we turned the engines off and all passengers watched without talking in amazement. 

- Mike Smith

Report from Elding: The sea condition and the weather were still perfect for a pleasant sailing. We headed directly to the area where the humpback whale was seen this morning. We first found 4-6 pods of 2-4 harbour porpoises. At first we stop to try to spot them well but like often the porpoises dove and disappeared. We continued until we saw the blow of a humpback whale. It was the same than this morning. The animal was very calm, surfacing a couple of times before going for a dive and showing a nice fluke. We stayed a while and decided to go further, with our binoculars we spotted another whale more in the south. We went there but we did not find the humpback that probably moved further south. We took the direction of Akranes and after some searching we spotted the blow of a third humpback near Hvalfjordur. In our way we found a big pods of 11-14 white-beaked dolphins that we could see quite well. The animals were not really curious about our boat but they passed under us and continued slowly their road. And there was another pod of those beautiful dolphins in the distance. We were not seeing the blow of the humpback seen previously so we decided to head back to Reykjavik. In our back a dolphin was repeatedly jumping in big splashes to finish well the tour.

- Miquel Pons