Wednesday, 18 September 2024

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 09:00, 13:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR |17:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 9:00, 13:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR |16:00

Report from Eldey: This morning we sailed out into foggy but calm seas. Luckily enough, after some sailing, we managed to escape the fog and view became clearer. It then didn't take us too long to find our first cetacean of the day, namely a minke whale! We saw this individual surfacing and lunge feeding a couple times until we decided to move onwards, in hopes of more wildlife. We then soon after found a pair of humpback whales! swimming side by side and fluke diving often. As we were staying with these individuals, we saw some more minke whales around us as well! We could clearly see the bay was getting very busy this morning as little after, we found ourselves a very excited pod of 3 white beaked dolphins nearby and a second pod somewhat more off into the distance! Eventually, it was time to leave these ones behind and sail back home, now with much clearer skies and smiles on our faces.

- Milan Vansteelandt

Report from Eldey: We set off this afternoon really excited after a wonderful morning. The forecast had said the weather would get worse but lucky for us this didn't happen until we had already started heading home so for the vast majority of the trip it was pretty calm and not raining. We headed to the same area as the morning. On our way out we had a quick look at 3 harbour porpoises. We then came across a large pod of 15-20 white beaked dolphins all feeding along with a humpback whale! They were all going a bit crazy, the humpback was rolling and the dolphins were jumping everywhere. We then carried on and found a pair of humpbacks, one being Pep. This pair surfaced just cm's from our boat at one stage which was a really special experience. During this we also saw another 2 pods of dolphins, combining to about 10 individuals in total. We then carried on and saw 3-4 minke whales probably also feeding on all the fish just like the humpbacks and dolphins. Next we found a 4th humpback in Davy Jones II! As always with this individual it was really cool. They were logging for a while then next thing we knew our engines were off as the whale was swimming really close to our boat for a long time. This gave everyone the best look possible at a humpback. To make it even cooler along with the 4 humpbacks we saw we saw blows of another 3 as well! So we then headed back really happy.

- Rob Hyman

black legged kittiwake, eider duck, common guillemot, great black backed gull, lesser black backed gull, manx shearwater, sooty shearwater, northern fulmar, northern gannet