Sunday, 17 November 2024

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 9:00, 13:00

After a whole week of rough weather keeping us ashore, we are finally able to set sail out into the bay today. We will be operating on our lovely vessel Eldey for the 9:00 and 13:00 Classic Whale Watching tour. Make sure to dress according to weather, and feel free to borrow our thermal overalls if needed.

Report from Eldey: We sailed towards the middle of Faxaflói with a sunrise behind us and a cold breeze to help us get out of Reykjavík, but funny enough, we barely left the island's area when a blow was seen near Viðey! It was from a humpback whale!! We were astonished as this doen't happen very often. This individual was being very random, popping up once or twice and then long diving for 7 or 8 minutes. Patience was key, and so this lovely whale came close to us and performed several small but good fluke dives at less than 50 meters! We were amazed by this creature, when another one popped up close by too, this time a minke whale! It came up two times but it took it's time to be noticed by everyone. After that, another surprise, a harbour seal decided to investigate what this big red boat was doing so close to land. The time was up, and after  smooth sail and another peek at the humpback, we headed back to the harbour.

- Pedro Teixeira

Report from Eldey: Again we set off with a bitter cold and strong winds from the north. Thankfully, as with this morning the cetaceans stuck around close to land. We were lucky enough to see 1 humpback whale after begining with a good sighting of 1 minke whale. We saw this minke in the same place as the morning, next to Viðey. It surfaced quite a bit for us. It then vanished so we headed towards skarfabakki harbour. Just outside here we saw the humpback which we then followed right the way up to the tip of Viðey, back to where the minke now was. We then spent some time watching the minke again before ending with another look at the humpback. We then headed back to the harbour after a great afternoon in the sun despite the freezing wind.

- Rob Hyman

eider duck, black guillemot, black headed gull, great cormorant, european shag, great black backed gull, black legged gull, iceland gull, glaucous gull, northern fulmar