Friday, 14 November 2014

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: we had rather strong eastern and south-eastern wind on this tour so we decided the best thing would be to go along it to start with to have a more pleasant outbound journey, even if it would mean that the journey back might be rockier. After some time, we got help from an unexpected direction. Elding's head captain, Vignir, spotted white-beaked dolphins while transporting one of our other vessels from Grindavik to Reykjavik and we benefited as it happened towards the end of their journey, when they were approaching Reykjavik and were very close to us. Vignir kept an eye on the dolphins while we were heading in their direction and only continued once we were there and had them in sight. This was a group of some 4-6 and while we lost sight of them from time to time amids the white tops and the swell, they always reappeared, seemingly showing some interest in us for often we had them very close to us! Eventually they disappeared and then we continued searching, yet without finding any cetaceans but we did see some large flocks of birds close to land. This is always a good thing as it indicates presence of food and food is what brings in the whales although there were none among those birds.

- Baldur Thorvaldsson

Birds seen on today's tour include: northern gannet, black-backed gulls, glaucous gulls, iceland gulls, eider ducks, common guillemots, and kittiwakes.