Friday, 24 January 2025

Friday, 24 January 2025

  • CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00

Today's whale watching tour from Reykjavík is ON SCHEDULE! Remember to dress according to weather and feel free to borrow our thermal overalls if needed!

CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00

Report from Eldey: After the sleet and snow yesterday and this morning, today was cold and icy but well worth braving the Atlantic ocean. We had amazing visibility today! We could see all the way across the bay to Snæfellsjökull. After sailing past Lundey, we saw a large group of birds and then in the distance the back of a whale! It was the same humpback whale that we've been seeing around the islands for the last few days. However, after a week or more of feeding, this whale had finally calmed down and was spending the day resting around the islands. We were able to watch the whale swim slowly and calmly in predictable lines, coming really close to our boat a couple of times! We followed them in closer towards land until it was too shallow for us to continue. Luckily the whale decided to turn around a follow the shoreline back towards us so we could see it a bit closer. Most of the time when we were watching the humpback, we were also spotting some harbour seals around us. Some of them got curious and came up close too! Over the whole tour we probably saw around 9 seals in total. After staying with the whale for a while, we continued our sail and explored further out to sea. It was beautiful to see the snow covered scenery around us but unfortunately we couldn't spot any other animals so we headed back into the harbour, still happy with our earlier sightings.

- Emily Erskine

Birds encountered today include:

Northern fulmar, eider duck, common guillemot, black guillemot, greater black-backed gull, lesser black-backed gull, great cormorant, European shag