Friday, 23 June 2023

Today we will be operating on Þruma RIB for our 20:00 Premium Whale tours and on our lovely vessel Eldey and Hafsúla for the 09:00, 13:00, 14:00 and 20:30 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 | 10:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 10:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 12:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 14:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 14:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 16:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 17:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 20:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 20:30

Report from Eldey: We sailed out in calmer conditions, the forecast said it would be rougher than it was. This was a nice surprise. Throughout most of the tour there was not much swell so everybody felt fine. For a long time we struggled to spot cetaceans then we found a pod of 5 harbour porpoises. They came pretty close to the boat for passengers to see. We then saw another 2 pods of porpoises (each 3-4 individuals) during the tour which gave everyone a good opportunity to make sure they saw our smallest cetacean. We also spotted an elusive minke whale. It surfaced twice near the boat for most people to see it. We then moved on because in the distance we knew of some other species. There was a pod of 6 white beaked dolphins they came super close and were bow riding. Some also leaped out the water which was very cool to see. We also had a humpback whale very near. This individual was very slow, maybe resting. It blew a few times before going down for a fluke dive. This was beautiful for everyone to see. Unfortunately, we ran out of time so had to head back to the harbour following a great last hour of the tour where we saw all 4 of our main cetaceans.

- Rob Hyman

Report from Eldey: with choppy seas, we continued sailing to more adventures in the afternoon. The sea was full of seabirds of many different species, specially the Atlantic puffins that we loved to spot on the way! Right in front of us, we saw a blow, that belonged to a minke whale that did an appearance and then decided to leave us right after. Not far, we saw a few fins, and we found out we had a pod of 5 white-beaked dolphins, that were a bit elusive, continuing their way. We saw another pod a bit far of another 6 dolphins, that decided to join the group. As they were doing their own thing, we continued our trip. However, as we didn't see anything else and the sightings we had of the minke whale and the dolphins were not very good, we decided to give out complimentary tickets so the passengers can come back and enjoy our Faxaflói stars one more time.

- Milla Brandão

Report from Eldey: very wet tour this evening - so wet the microphone stopped working a few times! But, apart for that, smooth sailing with barely any waves or wind, and the weather was warm (for Iceland). After about an hour of sail we encountered the first whales of the evening, a pod of white beaked dolphins (about 15) which were resting at the surface, diving shallowly and popping up very often. While we were observing these guys, a quiet minke whale popped out close to us, but didn't stay for long as it was swimming away from us. After these sightings, we continued on with our journey in search for humpback whales. This led us to find harbor porpoises, two of them, which were probably hunting some fish, as they were resurfacing often but quickly returning down. We continued with our sail and reach an area were there were 7 humpback whales, at various distances from us. In that moment we saw one of them lunge-feeding, which proved to be not a one time thing as it came out from the water again and again for a few times. It then started to surface further away from us, but since this was particularly active we decided to try to follow it. It proved to be quite an hard task, as this whale was travelling underwater fast. When we saw that we were not going to be able to keep up with it, we decided to leave it alone and return back to the area where we saw the other individuals. Our bet proved us right, as we encountered one of the previous humpbacks again and we managed to get very close to it. In the same area there were a 2-3 pods of dolphins, about 3-5 individuals big, which came very close to our ship allowing us to have a good look at them. Four of them were even playing with each other underwater, performing twirls around each other.

Unfortunately we didn't get to see any late-night sunset nor the panorama much, but the whales were beautiful, calm and everywhere!

Francesco Golin

Atlantic puffin, great black backed gull, lesser black backed gull, Arctic tern, Arctic skua, northern fulmar, northern gannet, common guillemot, black guillemot, eider duck, razorbill, black legged kittiwake