Thursday, 15 September 2022

Today we will be operating on Þruma RIB for our 10:00 and 14:00 Premium Whale tour 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 Eldey: Beautiful sunny weather and flat seas beckoned us out into the blue stillness, searching for some great beasts. Despite nearing the end of the season the bay was still full of life, with a rare sighting yesterday. Then glinting under the sun, some fins in the distance belonging to a pod of white beaked dolphins! These dolphins were very friendly and began approaching us, with some juveniles jumping out of the water. The dolphins appeared to be staying in 2 groups however and after some time with them bowriding, leaping and rolling we realised they had split up and there were 2 pods of dolphins all along. One pod had the majority of younglings, with about 13 adults, 2 juveniles and 2 calves, one calf even had foetal folds, so a recent newborn; the other had about 8 adults and a single juvenile. As more ships began to show up we started to leave these gracious animals alone, so as to not stress them out with a large number of ships around their newborn. The after searching for a bit and finding nothing we began to head home when suddenly some more dolphins appeared. Likely the same smaller pod as before we passed by them with some bowriding our boat again before spotting the other, larger group from earlier as well. These white beaked dolphins were just as playful now as before and lept for us as we travelled past them. Despite no whale sightings today we had an absolutely amazing time in the beautiful and rare Icelandic sun with these magnificent dolphins.

- Cindy Schwenk
 

Report from Eldey: Leaving port with perfect weather we quickly found our first animals; A pod of about 12 harbour porpoises were racing the boat out to sea on our right-hand side. The tiny cetaceans began to pull ahead and started to disappear into the distance. It wasn't too long after however when we had our next sighting, a group of dark fins glistening in the sun belonging to a pod of about 7 white beaked dolphins. The dolphins kept moving perpendicular to our boat, adjusting their course everytime we turned. Dolphins are smart and a juvenile was with them, so it didn't take us long to figure out that these animals didn't like having us around, knowing we had to turn the boat before we could follow them. Each individual whale or pod of dolphins have their own personalities and sometimes you get animals like this, so to reduce our impact on these animals the captain and I decided to move on and let these animals have a break from us. Almost as soon as we left though we found our first whale of the trip, a minke whale. This creature was taking regular dives for food underwater with only a few breathes at the surface again between dives. Seeing a group of minke whales in the distance we left this whale and approached the group finding another 4 minke whales irregularly taking dives for food. We danced around another boat from minke to minke, juvenile to adult, for a while before finally running out of time and having to return to harbour. 

- Liam van Walsum

Northern Fulmar, northern gannet, Common guillemot, black legged kittiwakes, Manx shearwater, European cormorant, lesser and greater black backed gull