FRIDAY, 24 JULY 2015

Tour at 20:30

Report from Hafsúlan: The sky was a perfect mix of red and blue as the sun was setting during this wonderful evening tour into the midnight sun. After the great success the day held we were in great spirits as we sailed from Reykjavík. The beginning of the tour proved to be a little difficult as we sailed through areas with thousands of birds feeding but no whales also feeding. Then a blow from a whale was spotted 8km away! This is a very long distance away but due to the great visibility we could see even that far. As we were heading in that direction was found a pair of minke whales that looked to be young whales travelling together. This is very rare for minke whales, a whale which is normally alone we could see traveliing side by side with another. We then saw the big blow again so found the cause, a humpback whale! This was a great one too as it was both travelling slowly through the area and acrobatically lunging with its head completely out of the water with a mouth full of fish. With the weather and whales this almost a perfect tour and the live music on our way back made it even better.

- Jack Ball

Tour at 17:00

Report from Hafsúlan: This had been a great day and the sun was just shining brighter this afternoon so we were really excited to head out into the bay. We went straight out again like this morning to spot the humpback whale. Fortunately the RIB boats spotted the humpback whale before us way further south than in the previous tours so we headed that way. We stayed with this individual for a while, watching it surface frequently but no fluke this time. A pod of white-beaked dolphins suddenly popped up in the suns glare. We had some beautiful sightings with this pod of dolphins, maybe 4 individuals and then we went back to the humpback. This time the individual was lunge feeding and showing some amazing behavior which was just great. After maybe about an hour watching this beautiful creature in amazing weather we decided to head back and see if we could see some other cetaceans on the way. Our captain and some passengers spotted a minke whale on the way back but it only surfaced once. This was just a great way to end our whale watching day. 

- Katrín Björnsdóttir

Tour at 14:00

Report from Eldey: For our afternoon tour we decided to repeat our morning plan, heading out straight to where the humpback whales were that we saw on the morning tour. The Faxaflói bay seemed very active, we spotted three minke whales between 250 and 900 meters away from the boat on our way out. Especially the animal we spotted right before we reached our first humpback whale was giving us a nice look at it while it was passing our boat on the side. The first humpback whale that we encountered seemed to be traveling, and we followed it for a while until we decided to move on to the other individual, that we knew was still around. We barely turned the boat when we saw the second animal. We realized very fast that this animal seemed to be resting, so we approached it very carefully. The animal seemed very relaxed, while we watched it swim up so close to our stopped boat that our passengers could nearly touch it. An encounter like this, most of our passengers on board will probably never forget.

- Michaela Buchbauer

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: The sea conditions were really good today, a flat sea which made it real easy for us to encounter the cetaceans. Lucy, our researcher spotted some harbour porpoises after only couple of minutes after leaving the harbour. After about 40 minutes of sailing we saw another pod of harbour porpoises but we kept on going further into the bay because we really wanted to see the humpback again. Few minutes later we encountered two minke whales in the same sighting. Still we kept on going and decided to see the minkes on our way back. We were really happy to see a blow in the distance. The humpback whale was still there. This individual was really calm and clearly resting. Unfortunately he didn't show his fluke but we still got some amazing sightings. On our way back we encountered the the minke whale again. 

- Katrín Björnsdóttir

Tour at 10:00

Report from Eldey: On this very beautiful morning we left the harbour in search of cetaceans. We heard about a humpback whale far west from Reykjavik, so we decided to immediately travel to this area. Even though we had no time to stop, we managed to spot a small group of white- beaked dolphins in the distance. When we finally reached the location we were traveling towards we found ourselves in the company of a humpback whale. After a short while we kept on going, further out the bay, where we encountered another humpback whale. This animal was amazing to watch, and we enjoyed it as long as we could, until we had to turn our boat around and head back home. 

- Michaela Buchbauer

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: We went out from Reykjavík with a beautiful view over the surroundings from Faxaflói bay. The crew had high hope for this tour because the midnight tour was apparently amazing with a humpback and some dolphins. We decided to go straight out were the humpbacks were spotted yesterday and at about an hour we spotted a blow in 3 km distance. We were so happy about this and soon after we spotted another blow, so two humpback whales in the same area! We stayed with one of the humpbacks for a while and we found out it was Þröstur. We had some pretty good sightings with Þröstur but we decided to move on to the other humpback since he was showing some feeding behavior. This humpback was really beautiful and came really close to the boat for all the passengers to see. This tour was really great and sightings from a humpback is always a pleasure. 

- Katrín Björnsdóttir

Bird species seen on today's tours include: northern gannets, northern fulmars, arctic terns, kittiwakes, arctic skua, puffins, common guillemots, black-backed gulls.