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Wednesday, 27 September 2023
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 | 9:00, 13:00
- PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 10:00
- PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 14:00
CLASSIC WHALE WATCHING | 0900
Report from Eldey: We sail our way into the bay, to try to find some cetaceans. The waves were cool enough to let us adventure as well as the easterly wind on our backs on the way out. The sky was a bit grey, but oh well, let's find some whales. Not too long into the journey we found a pod of 4 harbour porpoises porpoising away from us, as they were a bit elusive. We continued our trail and after a little bit we found ourselves a pod of 5 to 6 white-beaked dolphins that were super close to us and in awe for seeing us. In the middle of all the commotion, a minke whale showed up to greet our presence with a very close swim by. We saw it quite a few times but the time was short and we had to get back to the safety of the harbour in Reykjavík.
- Anna Richter
CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00
Report from Eldey: the sea conditions were better than in the morning; the sea has calmed down, but we still had a bit of rain, especially at the end. Our adventure today started with a harbour porpoise that was passing by very close to the boat right in the beginning. Then, we saw a couple of dorsal fins at the surface and we got closer to a pod of about 7 white-beaked dolphins, that were feeding at the area. They were also surfing with the waves and super curious about the boat, coming very close and bowriding. We were lucky to see them also through the surface, checking us out. We stayed a while with this animals, until we decided to check what else was out there. We got to an area with more seabirds and we spotted a minke whale in the area and another dolphin in front of us. Actually, we had at least 3 minkes there, as we saw we were in a very good spot. These individuals were scattered, some close, some far, but we could take a good look at them! When we were heading back, before we got a bit of heavy rain, we had the beautiful sighting of an entire rainbow, from the end to the beginning, completing our amazing landscape while we approached the harbour.
- Milla Brandao
Birdlife encountered today:
Northern gannets, Northern fulmars, eider ducks, razorbills, common guillemots, herring gulls, black backed gulls, glaucous gulls, Iceland gulls, black footed kittiwakes
Wildlife encountered today:
The Minke Whale is the most common whale around Iceland and actually the world thus it is one of the main species we encounter on our whale watching tours. It is one of few species that don’t mind coming to shallower waters like here in Faxaflói Bay to feed on the abundant food available to them.
The white-beaked dolphin is the most common dolphin found in the surrounding waters of Iceland and is seen not only in the summer but winter too usually in larger numbers, hundreds sometimes. When feeding they show energetic behaviour such as breaching out of the water and coming down with a big splash and bursts of fast swimming.
The Harbour Porpoise is the smallest and most abundant cetacean around Iceland. They are usually shy but occasionally they come and play around the boats. They can be relatively hard to spot from a distance due to their size and their abundance depends entirely on the food availability of our shores since they are opportunistic feeders.