Friday, 11 February 2022

Today we will be operating on our lovely vessel Eldey for the 09:00 & 13:00 Classic Whale Watching tours. Make sure to dress appropriately for the tours as it is always colder on sea than on land.

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 09:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00

COVID-19: Keep in mind that passengers and crew are asked to ensure their own hygiene and safety at all times. Washing hands thoroughly with soap and using a hand sanitiser is advised. Masks are mandatory in areas where keeping 1 meter distance from others is not possible.

Report from Eldey: After 7 days of cancellations due the storms and high swells we were ready to head out and see what Faxaflói had to offer. There was still some residual swell but if you stayed outside and taken a seasickness tablet (available for free when asked) it was no problem. There were a few things on the ocean surface that looked liked whales to the untrained eye like large clumps of seaweed that had broken off from the rocks and huge rafts of hundreds of European Shags but everyone was also very good at spotting Icelands smallest cetacean: harbour porpoises. These tiny little guys were popping up everywhere, small pods of 2-3 individuals and we must have seen at least 4-5 pods throughout the tour. 2 pods were swimming quite calmly at the surface making it possible to photograph these zippy animals. They must have had a belly full of fish and quite content to just cruise around for a while. There were huge flocks of gulls, auks and gannets in a couple of areas, which was very promising for other cetaceans. We all scanned the surface but no whales or dolphins were encountered on this tour. We offered our passengers complimentary tickets and hoped they would join us again. The tour was still full of birdlife and porpoises and the snow-capped mountains and visibility was fantastic to make this still a very enjoyable tour.

- Megan Whittaker

Report from Eldey : The swell was getting better this afternoon, making the tour pleasant. Like this morning we found a lot of flocks of birds even if there were less active. We had a first sighting with a single harbour porpoise crossing our path and surfacing very close to the bow, then it appeared once more on our left and disappeared. We saw a huge group of european shags in the water and tried to see if there was any cetacean around. We saw nothing and continued our tour until we found 4-6 harbour porpoises quickly surfacing non far from us. Two of those little cetaceans seemed to be curious and came very close to our boat, surfacing a few times. We could see through the water how quickly they swim. What an uncommon sighting ! Porpoises that act like dolphins. During the way back we had another nice sighting with a pod of 7-9 white-beaked dolphins that seemed to be divided in two close groups. They were very calm, swimming close to each other so maybe socializing. We stayed with them a while until other boats arrived. It´s good to see that there is still cetaceans in the bay after many storms.

- Miquel Pons 
 

Common guillemot, European shag, great cormorant, northern fulmar (light and dark morph) black-legged kittiwake, black-backed gull, glaucous gull, herring gull, northern gannet, eider duck.