15 JULY 2015

Tour at 20:30

Report from Elding: The sun was out so the midnight sun view was beautiful tonight. We went out with the northeastern winds in our faces but still excited to see some cetaceans. We had to look pretty hard for the animals tonight but after about an hour our talented musician, Bjarni spotted a big blow in about 700 distance. We got really excited and headed closer, when we arrived on the area that Bjarni had spotted the blow a minke whale surfaced right in the suns glare. We were a little disappointed that it wasn't a humpback whale but still glad to see the beautiful minke. When we had seen this individual a few times we saw big splashes in the water far away. When we came closer we encountered a big pod of white-beaked dolphins. They were leaping and showing some amazing behavior, what we call inverted leaping. This was an amazing sightings and everybody were really happy when we headed back home for Reykjavík harbour. Our musician Bjarni kept the fun going on the way back.

-Katrín Björnsdóttir

Tour at 17:00

Report from Hafsúlan: With the wind in our hair we sailed forth on to Faxaflói bay in search of cetaceans. Spotting was hampered by the amount of whitecaps but we persevered and not long in to our journey we were richly rewarded. One of our eagle eyed passengers spotted some splashing in the distance which on close inspection turned out to be large pod of breaching and leaping white beaked dolphins. There were about 15 individuals and most of them performed awesome leaps and twists in the air. We stayed close to this dolphins until soon we had a mother and calf swim alongside us for about 20mins. The calf seemed very curious and kept leaping in front of us. We eventually had to tear ourselves from the dolphins in search of some larger animals. Although we had some great bird sightings we were unlucky in that we didn´t spot any larger cetaceans. Still a great trip for dolphins. 

-Tommy Torrades

Tour at 14:00

Report from Elding: We sailed out in warm summer winds and soon encountered a pod of 7 trickster white beaked dolphins that had been surfacing for other boats and then rushing off out of sight. We encountered them once before they did the same to us so we decided to head further into the whale spotting area. There we encountered a family pod of 5 white beaked dolphins that hung around for a few minutes checking out our boat before they continued on their own way. No minke whales were spotted but the dolphins were very curious about our boat and came really close to us.

- Svala Jónsdóttir

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: The tour on this afternoon started out with stronger wind, but still sunny nice weather for whale-watching. Immediately we traveled to the area where we had so many minke whales on the morning tour. Unfortunately they seemed to have moved, so we kept on going west. It seemed that there was less fish around then in the morning, but still we managed to spot two minke whales not far from each other. At some point we thought the animals might have moved on, when suddenly one whale surfaced only about 50-70 meters away from the boat, giving us a very close look at it before we had to turn the boat around to go back to Reykjavik.

- Michaela Buchbauer

Tour at 10:00

Report from Elding: The warm breeze was welcomed onboard since on this trip there were many young children wearing their life jackets. We encountered 3 minke whales in one good area, they were all busy feeding at the bottom of the sea, they didn't have a lot of time to go human watching so we left them and headed further into the whale spotting area. There we encountered 2-3 minkes. One of them breathed out up wind of us so some passengers got to feel how stinky a minke breath can be and then later on in the trip we encountered another 2 minkes, one of which came really close to our boat. A trip filled with cheers on Elding.

- Svala Jónsdóttir

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: On this a bit windy morning we left the harbour in search of cetaceans. After a short trip traveling west we found ourselves surrounded by minke whales. Which started out with one single individual turned into at least 5 animals in an one kilometer radius. We had so many minke whales coming up all around, it was hard to decide where to look. After a while watching these incredible creatures we decided to move on to look for different species. Just as we decided to turn the boat around to head back home we spotted a small pod of two white-beaked dolphins. Even though these animals seemed a little bit shy, we enjoyed seeing them at least a few times. Estimating 6-8 minke whales.

- Michaela Buchbauer

Bird species seen on today's tours include: northern gannets, northern fulmars, kittiwakes, pomeranian skuas, common guillemots, puffins, arctic skuas, great skuas, arctic terns, black-backed gulls.