Friday, 12 November 2021

Report from Eldey: We sailed out from an almost dark harbour, but when we reached the bay we saw that today would be a beautiful day. There was low wind, low swell, and a very nice sky with some pink and yellow hues. We sailed to the area where we saw the whales yesterday, and we soon had success: we saw the blow of a humpback whale. The whale was feeding, surfacing only shortly but also showing us its fluke quite frequently.  In the same area, we spotted other blows and other tails of humpback whales, but also two small pods of a total of 8-10 of white-beaked dolphins and 2-3 minke whales surfacing near flocks of birds. In total there was probably 3 different humpback whales. On of those humpbacks surfaced extremely close to the boat on our side and we could see it through the surface at only 20-30 meters ! It seemed that the animal was resting a bit at the surface before going for a dive. We went back home still seeing some blows far away. Such a nice way to start the day !

- Miquel Pons

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

Report from Eldey: We started our tour hopeful to see one of the humpback whales that we encountered this morning. Even before we reached the area where we had had this morning’s sightings, we spotted a blow. We saw two other blows in the same direction, but some distance apart so we thought there were at least three humpback whales. When we approached the first one, we tried to follow it but it was feeding and surfacing in unexpected places after long dives, so we decided to search for the whales who had produced the other two blows. We then found not one, not two, but three humpback whales together! When they showed us their dorsal fins and later their flukes, we recognised that these were the three whales that we have been seeing together for the past month. They were rolling, one of them lifted its pectoral fins, and they stayed very close together and close to our boat. The whales were mere meters away and we could clearly hear their exhales and watch them in detail when they surfaced right next to us. Time had flown and we had to start heading to Reykjavík with this amazing encounter in our minds, but the way back had more surprises in store for us: we saw at least three different individuals surfacing separately, each within 200 meters of our boat! It was great to see that the bay is still so full of whales – at least seven different humpback whales!

- Eline van Aalderink