Wednesday, 18 March 2026

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 9:00, 13:00

Today's Whale Watching tours from Reykjavík are on schedule! Remember to dress according to weather and feel free to borrow our thermal overalls if needed!

Report from Hafsulan: Today the sun was shining strongly, the northern winds prevailed and there were no big waves in sight. Nonetheless, we went out to search for some fun whales. About half an hour into the tour, we spotted a couple of big blows about a mile away; they were tall and not bulky, so we thought it was a big whale. As we got closer, we could tell for sure that we were in the presence of 2 fin whales!! An animal only second to the blue whale in size!! We stayed with one of them that seemed to be interested in the school of fish that was around. Another blow was seen nearby of a humpback whale, and then another one too of the same species! Having two species of big whales so close was a dream! Not too far away, a big pod of white-beaked dolphins was travelling fast towards these 3 big whales and in formation, they struck the fish, forming a bait ball! An authentic BBC documentary was being unveiled in front of us. We continued on, seeing another 2 blows in the distance from another 2 humpbacks, but didn't have any more time to see them, so we went home!

- Pedro Teixeira

Report from Hafsulan: In the afternoon, the wind dropped dramatically and the swells mostly disappeared. We headed back to the successful areas from the morning and we had amazing luck! We first spotted a humpback whale by itself milling around. We watched a few fluke dives from this individual but saw even bigger blows in the distance so went to investigate. There we found a pair of fin whales! They were travelling together, side-by-side. Sometimes they would surface completely synchronised! It was incredible to see these huge animals so close to us. A few times we could hear their powerful breaths. After another boat arrived, we carried on and soon found a very active area. Two humpbacks and over 200 white-beaked dolphins were everywhere! There were three large feeding frenzies with one humpback lunge feeding in the middle. There must have been a lot of fish around to feed everybody! We even saw a fulmar trying to eat one of the cod that didn't manage to swim away. After watching this live National Geographic experience, we unfortunately had to head back to the harbour. However, we first spotted another humpback whale that we stopped by and just before getting to the islands we saw the same humpback from the start again. Just and absolutely INCREDIBLE afternoon!

- Emily Erskine

Northern fulmar, eider duck, black-legged kittiwake, lesser black-backed gull, great black-backed gull, herring gull, glaucous gull, black guillemot, razorbill