Saturday, 24 August 2024

Today we will be operating our Classic Whale Watching on our lovely vessel Eldey at 9:00, 13:00, 17:00 our just as lovely Hafsúlan at 11:00, 15:00 and 19:00. Our Premium Whale Watching tour will operate on Þruma I-V at 9:00, 10:00, 16:00 and 17:00

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 9:00, 11:00, 13:00, 15:00, 17:00, 19:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 9:00, 10:00, 16:00, 17:00

Report from Eldey : For our first tour of the day, we found a much better weather than the previous days. A sizeable swell was still there, but the wind had gone down and we had good visibility, seeing all the way to the smokes emanating from the new volcanic eruption. Not far from Reykjavik, all around the islands, is where we found our whales. A first humpback whale was gently resting, mainly staying still at the surface of slowly swimming forward. A second humpback whale was feeding, changing direction a lot and offering us the sight of their beautiful fluke dives, just a few meters from our boat. Two minke whales were also in the area, probably feeding as well, changing direction often but staying within the area. We finally even found a third humpback ! This one was also resting, just like the first one and we could stay and observe it for a while. We headed back to the harbor on much calmer seas, happy with the numerous sightings from this first tour. 


- Lasse Roggenkamp 

Report from Hafsula: This late morning we were greeted by strong Northerly winds and slightly grey skies, which hugged Esja creating quite a moody atmosphere. We did a mini island tour as we headed out, seeing Videy and Lundey - it was nice and sheltered here and we even spotted a blow as well. The blow means a bigger cetacean and as we got closer we saw it was a humpback whale! This whale started off travelling past us to extremely shallow waters and then started getting a little bit more active, showing its white pectoral fins from time to time. It was quite an interesting humpback! It changed behaviour quiet a bit and often stayed in fairly shallow water. Seeing it in this more shallow bit meant we were saved from the wilder winds further out, so we all felt lucky to have spotted this humpback. We stayed with it for a bit before time ran out and we headed back home.

- Anna Richter

Report from Eldey : This afternoon, for our second tour of the day, the wind picked up but the swell went down and the weather remained dry. We found our first humpback whale close to the islands. It was traveling, changing directions quite often, going for shallow dives. We could even see it lunge feeding a couple of times! A minke whale was in  the same area, and we could observe it surfacing quite a few times. We finally sailed a bit more into the bay and found a second humpback whale. This one was mainly traveling and going for shallow dives as well, sometimes changing directions. After following it for a while, we finally came back to Reykjavik as the sun was finally appearing. 

- Olivia Garcia 

Report from Elding: There was a cold northern wind over the bay today. We started by checking out the sheltered area close to land to see if anyone was swimming around there, and we quickly found a minke whale that came up out of nowhere! But just as fast as he had appeared, he also vanished and we didn´t find the minke whale again. We continued our journey and suddenly saw a pectoral fin of a humpback whale. The whale was moving quite fast, but sometimes he came quite close to the boat and showed us his fluke. When it was time to head back to Reykjavík we encountered a pod of 4 harbour porpoises that showed themselves quite well as they traveled past us. What a wonderful diversity of species! 

- Eline van Aalderink

Report from Eldey: We sailed out and did not have to go far to find our first whale. We saw a blow and approached. It was a lazy humpback whale that showed us its fluke a few times until we left it on its own. In total we encountered abouyt 5 humpback whales and 5 harbour porpoises that appeared out of nowhere, many lunge diving northern gannets as well. The wind could not stop us from enjoying the encounters today.

-Lasse Roggenkamp 

Report from Elding: We sailed out into the wind hoping to find more whales yet again. We sailed around all the islands just off the coast hoping to find the whales in similar places again. We did get to see 2 pods of 2 harbour porpoises. They both only surfaced 2-3 times in each case. We carried on our search though. We got to see quite a few Northern gannets flying around and even a few diving. But unfortunately we didn't manage to spot any bigger cetaceans. So we then gave out complimentary tickets so everyone can come back and hopefully have better luck seeing cetaceans.

- Rob Hyman

Northern gannet, northern fulmar, common guillemot, black guillemot, herring gull, black-headed gull, great black-backed gull, lesser black-backed gull