Thursday, 4 September 2025

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 09:00, 13:00, 17:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR |10:00, 14:00, 16:00

Report from Eldey: We headed out onto the bay on mild waves, low wind, and under cloudy skies. Our first sighting was a blow in the distance belonging to a humpback whale, but we were briefly distracted by a bold minke whale surfacing rather close to us. Once this sneaky little whale disappeared, we turned out attention back to the humpback, which actually turned out to be 2, a pair of humpbacks! As we stayed with them, another minke crept up in the background. Suddenly, the 2 humpbacks began breaching, tail slapping, pec slapping and peduncle throwing in front of us, putting on quite the show! Closer to the end of the tour, we started heading back towards the harbour, with calm but cold weather. This was great for our passengers that were in the cafeteria, where they could warm themselves up with some hot drinks, on the way back.

- Ricardo

Report from Eldey: We had a cloudy afternoon, but with good weather, as the sea was calm and the wind was weak. We sailed into the bay with great visibility and a beautiful view to the mountains that surround the bay, including the Snæfellsjökull glacier, which sits on top of an active volcano. Our first sighting consisted of a pod of 5 to 7  harbour porpoises, which were more active than usual, surfacing near us multiple times and allowing most of our passengers to see them. As we moved further from the coast, we started seeing some blows in the distance, as well as a large splash cause by some humpback whales! We headed over as quickly as we could, encountering 3-5 minke whales along the way. We finally arrived at a pair of humpbacks, peacefully surfacing nearby. These humpbacks then began fluking and spy-hopping close to our boat. After spending a nice time with them, we started heading back, with the weather turning colder and cloudier on the way back.

- Maria Ernesto

Report from Eldey: Our tour started with light rain, which made many of our passengers choose to stay inside our warm and dry saloons. However, the sea was very calm and it didn't take long for the rain to fade away. Similarly to many of our tours, these past few days, the sightings began with harbour porpoises. But these were not our regular porpoise sightings, we saw group after group of porpoises, with some of them reaching up to 15 or 17 individuals. For a short period, we had a sighting of 3-4 minke whales, but this was rapidly followed by more sightings of porpoises, which might have totaled almost 50 porpoises throughout the tour. This was a first-time experience for both our guides onboard, who had never seen so many porpoises during a tour. They were however, not the only amazing sightings in our tour, as we later came across one humpback whale, followed by a trio of humpbacks. These whales, the largest among our common species, started socializing close to our boats, turning their bodies and pec-slapping their massive pectoral fins on the water surface. The whales were also briefly joined by two white-beaked dolphins, which meant we saw all four common species of cetaceans that we have in Faxaflói Bay, before happily returning to the harbour.

- Orsi Stipsicz

Northern gannet, Northern fulmar, herring gull, greater and lesser black-backed gull, black-headed gull, common guillemot