Friday, 1 April 2016

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey and Hafsúlan: This was a busy afternoon for us so we went out on two boats. The wind speed had gone down during the day so it felt warm with the overalls. We sailed from Reykjavík to the area out of Hafnarfjorður where we saw the whales this morning. It didn't take us long until we spotted the first humpback whale. Both of our boats watched this animal until Hafsúlan spotted another humpback even closer to land. Hafsúlan had to patient with the second humpback for some time as it was elusive. In the end it changed behavior and surfaced more frequently and it was easy to photograph the whale while it was milling around us. Eldey also got to see a minke whale before they started to sail back to Reykjavík.

Sigurlaug and Marcus 

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: We sailed out from Hafnarfjörður this morning. We were expecting some rough sea and weather but conditions out of the harbour wasn't too bad. We could sail with the wind on our way out and spotting conditions were good. We went to the same area as previous days and there we managed to find a humpback whale feeding! It was a rather small humpback but it gave us beautiful views and it surfaced close to us on several occasions. We could see the fluke going up when it went for deeper dives, an impressive sight to see! The guide got a short look of a minke whale in the distance but it was only seen once and not seen again. We decided to end the tour in Reykjavík and we headed back with memories of a humpback whale and nice photographs.

- Marcus Bergström

Bird species seen on todays tours include: northern gannet, northern fulmar, shag cormorant, black guillemot, glaucous gull, Iceland gull, greater black-backed gull, lesser black-backed gull, herring gull, black-headed gull, kittiwake, common gull, European wigeon, common teal, oystercatcher, red-breasted merganser, long-tailed duck and eider duck.