Tour at 13:00
Once again the weather was delightful. We headed to our favourite place and again Humpback Whales and Minke Whales galore. We turned of the engines on a couple of occasions too enjoy the sounds of the whales and birds and watch as the birds swoop down to grab the fish, Humpback Whales breaching in the distance and breathing close by and the Minke Whales rolling to optimise the speed to catch as much fish as possible. Great day to be out at sea.
Tour at 9:00
What a whale of a day! The most fallegur dagur (Icelandic for beautiful day) is a long time. Blue skies, calm seas and fantastic visibility to the point of being able to see the stunning snow capped mountains of Snæfellsnes and Snæfellsjökull. We headed straight towards the area of yesterdays activity and once again it didn't disappoint. We had at least 5-7 Humpback Whales and a couple of Minke Whales and thousands of seabirds mainly Fulmars and Kittiwakes. All the whales were a little difficult at first, only coming up to the surface once or twice to breathe before going on a long deep dive but a while later we think the fish started to move closer to the surface which meant we could see the whales more frequently and get closer to them. One of the Humpback Whales was even identified by a Húsavík researcher visiting us before he ventures back up north. It was one that was seen throughout July and August last year up in Skjálfandi Bay off the coast of Húsavík. It was not named so we gave the passengers a challenge to come up with an imaginative name and it was then picked out of a cup at the end of a tour. The Humpback Whale in the catalogue with the ID number MN176 is now commonly known as Engelbert after Engelbert Humperdink. Sara one of the other researcher on board also got a picture of a Puffin so whoo hoo our first Puffin of the season. Great fun tour :)