Monday, 27 November 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, 13:00

Report from Eldey: With a pink sky on the East where the sun rises and a bit of wind, we sailed out in search of some marine mammals! It took us a little bit more than an hour but we found something! Following a few splashes in the distance we located a big pod of 10 to 12 white-beaked dolphins that came towards us in happiness to see us and one of them decided to start to jump quite a lot! It produced some nice photos and some nice videos from every passenger on board! Amazing sighting but we wanted more, and so, we left them behind and continued to explore the rest of the bay. Not too long after that we spotted a few razorbills and gulls bobbling and feeding on the surface, a good sign for us. And there it was, a blow! It was from a shy humpback whale that never showed the fluke so we couldn´t identify this individual. We saw the blow many times as well as the back. The dolphins decided to show up again and this time 3 jumped together with the view of the city behind, a spectacular image to burn in my memory. We left them all because the time was up and we had a schedule to respect. Anyway, an amazing dolphin day!

- Pedro Teixeira

Report from Eldey: the sea conditions and the wind continued as the same as the previous tour, but now we had some light rain to add to the mix. We put on our overalls and raincoats and we were ready to set sail in the bay of Faxaflói! We thought about starting from the same area we saw the cetaceans in the morning, and when we got there, we saw a couple of dorsal fins popping up on the surface. We had a pod of 4 white-beaked dolphins close to us! At first, they seemed to continue their way but then they came into our direction, and started to bowride. They also seemed like they didn't have a specific goal in that area, going to different directions, following us, having fun surfing with the waves, so we supposed they were just milling in this area. Leaving these ones, we explored another area that, not too far from the previous pod, we found another one, this time bigger, that merged into the old one and now we had as least 15-20 dolphins around the boat! We could have a great look of them, seeing them very close and through the surface. These pod seemed a bit more active, sometimes jumping close to us. We noticed we were running out of time and decided to start our journey back home, watching the sun set behind the many clouds.

- Milla Brandao

Northern fulmar, razorbill, Icelandic gull, great black-backed gull, herring gull, great cormorant, eider duck, black-headed gull, black-legged kittiwake