Tuesday, 14 August 2012

Tour at 17:00

Report from Hafsúlan: Great tour with 4 Minke Whales and 30-50 Harbour Porpoises quite close to the boat. The tour started at Engey to see the Atlantic Puffins. We had not sailed far before spotting our first cetaceans, a large pod of cute entertaining Harbour Porpoises. Then our first Minke popped up in front of our boat and we followed it for a bit, when another one surfaced that we followed longer. Two more individuals were around not that far away. The french group and the other passengers all had a good time. The Sunset was beautiful. The light of Nature and atmosphere in the bay changed through the tour, but not only this evening, the weather and light changed the whole day, showing off the landscape, from cloudy to sunny and misty. Very romantic! Welcome to Iceland!

Tour at 14:00 Report from Elding: We sailed out of the old harbour of Reykjavík and started the trip by taking a look at the puffins in Engey. After spending a nice time with the puffins we sailed out Faxaflói bay and got news from our sister wessel Hafsúlan that the Pilot Whales had been spotted again. It was amazing seeing the Long Finned Pilot Whales, very big pod 150+ animals and with them were a pod of  Atlantic White Sided Dolphins as well. These Pilot Whales were in a playful mood breaching out of the water so we could see the hole body! It was incredible experience to be able to spend some time with these animals and observe there behavior. On our way back we had a wonderful view of Reykavík and its surrounding and when we were very close to Reykjavík we got a glipse of a Minke Whale! It was very elusive and only surfaced few times but it was a very good ending to a very nice tour.

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: We went out straight to the open sea and had one of the greatest tours watching Long-Finned Pilot Whales and Atlantic White Sided Dolphins at the same time living in the same big pod. The Pilot Whales were between 100-200 animals and were associated to at least 20 Atlantic White Sided Dolphins. It was not easy to see how many dolphins were there, but they were surfacing a lot around and very close to the pod of Pilot Whales all resting together in the same place. Pilot Whales are known to be very social, gregarous cetaceans which share very tight family bonds, and associate or live with other species of cetaceans like the bottlenose dolphins, common dolphins or even humpback whales. They might have followed mackerel during the night close to land and were resting in the morning. They generally feed at night and rest during the day. Pods are composed mostly of females and their babies, which are all related to each other like a big family and some males born in other pods. In a pod there are fewer males that are needed for reproduction and are polygamous. There's one leader at the head of the pod, that the other animals all follow. That was an amazing time watching them, we didn't want to disturb them while they rested, so we left slowly. We could hear them whistling and see calves. They sometimes lob-tailed, and spy-hopped a lot. One breached while we left the group. We saw many puffins at Engey flying and standing in front of the burrows, white bellies displayed.

Tour at 10:00Report from Skrúður: We started our trip by heading out to Engey to take a look at the puffins, it was nice to see how many of them were there sitting in front of their burrows. Then we sailed on out Faxaflói and soon we got news from our sister vessel Hafsúlan that they had spotted Pilot Whales! Of course we headed straigt to them and were delighted to see the big pod of Long Finned Pilot Whales and pods of Atlantic White Sided Dolphins there as well! We stayed with them as long as we could since seeing these Pilot Whales in inshore waters is a rare sight. Of course in the end we decided to sail slowly in the direction of Reykjavik because we wanted to have time to stop if we spotted anything on the way back. After a short sail we spotted a Minke Whale coming up close to the boat, it was though rather elusive so we soon headed on. But the tour was not yet over, because we saw White Beaked Dolphins jumping out of the water! These were very big and playful dolphins jumping high out of the waters so we saw the hole body coming out of the sea! In was an incredible end to a great tour!

Tour at 9:00

Report from Elding: We first went to see the puffins at the new colony situated on Engey, they were great standing with their white bellies in front of the entrances of their burrows. Then we went out to the bay, saw a difficult minke whale from far and waited so long for it to surface that we decided to search further out, until we heard our sister vessel talking about something unusual they spotted. It was Long-Finned Pilot Whales, more than 100 different individuals very tight to each other, resting at the surface. These animals have very strong family bonds and when they rest you can see how caring and tight to each other they are, keeping contact by touching each other with their fins. We saw them spy-hopping as well and saw flukes out of the water, calves as well. Unfortunately, we stayed only a few minutes with them, and crossed fingers to see them on the next tour. We quickly saw dolphins but weren't sure what species, and figured out later that the Pilot Whales were associated to Atlantic White Sided Dolphins when we sailed at 13h.

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: We started our tour with a visit of the island Engey were we saw many puffins both sitting on the island and also flying around us. We sailed further in our bay and after a while we saw a big group of northern gannets diving into the sea. It was great to watch the birds, we went closer to them and we were hoping to see a whale in this area as well. Unfortunately we were not lucky. Afterwards we sailed to our sister vessel Elding because we heard that they found a minke whale. Unfortunately this guy disappeared already as we arrived at this place. We went further out and we saw many more northern gannets. Suddenly we spotted a group of pilot whales in the distance. We were really excited because these whales are normally farer out at sea and we normally do not see them in our bay. We slowly went closer to them and it was great to see such a big pod of whales in a small area. It was difficult to guess how many pilot whales we saw but we estimated 100 to 200 individuals. Some of them came with their head out of the water, some of them showed their fluke. It was an unforgettable experience for all of us and everybody was happy as we sailed back to the harbour.

Birds seen on today's tours: Storm Petrels, Northern Gannets, Manx Shearwaters, Common Guillemots, Shags or Cormorants, Migrating Birds up in the sky maybe Geese, Arctic Terns, Arctis Skuas, Fulmars, Lesser Black Backed Gulls, Atlantic Puffins, Eider Ducks, Kittiwakes, Herring Gulls.

Photos taken on the 10:00 and 14:00 tours today by Sveinn Hólmar and Lisa hofmann