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Saturday, 30 September 2023
Today we will be operating 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
- CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00
- PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 10:00
- CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00
- PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 14:00
CLASSIC WHALE WATCHING | 0900
Report from Eldey: The wind blowing harshly in our ears and the clouds covering the sky, we expected to have a bit of a hard time this morning. It turned out to be quite the contrary. After sailing out through the foggy and rainy bay, hoping to finally have a first sighting, a minke whale breached straight in front of us. Repeating this feat several times, it gave a chance for everyone to see this formidably rare sighting. After staying a bit with this individual, who had by now gone back to its minke shyness, we decided to head further out. Very quickly, we passed by a pod of harbour porpoises that, for once, all seemed to have seen. This was followed by 2 pods of white beaked dolphins and 3 other minke whales, who roamed around us for quite some time. We decided to slowly head in a last spot before turning back to the harbour: a wise decision, as a large pod of close to 15 dolphins showed up. Several jumped out through the waves, whilst mother and calf pairs stayed grouped. We headed back to the harbour, with a sense of having had a rare morning in this end of summer.
- Alexandre Paumier
CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 1300
Report from Eldey: We sailed out this afternoon and thankfully it wasn't raining on this tour. We headed to the same area as this morning hoping for more of the same. Once we arrived here a minke whale appeared super close to us on our right hand side. It is very rare for a minke to be this close but unfortunately this was the only time that it surfaced. So we carried on. We then saw 2 harbour porpoises surface a few times to our front. Then another minke appeared but it followed the same pattern as the first. It was very close but only came to the surface once. Next we saw a pod of 4-5 white beaked dolphins but we never managed to get close to them before they disappeared. We then had to start heading back to the harbour. As we approached Reykjavik a lone harbour porpoise surfaced at least 10 time on our left hand side giving those passengers who stayed outside a lovely end to the tour. Due to the elusiveness of the majority of our sightings we gave our passengers complimentary tickets so they can come back another time and hopefully get to see cetaceans for longer periods.
- Rob Hyman
Bird species encountered today include:
Northern gannet, black headed gull, Iceland gull, black backed gulls, common guillemot, razorbill, Northern fulmar, Manx shearwater, Great cormorant, eider duck
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.