Friday, 24 June 2022

• 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
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 17:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 20:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 20:30

Report from Eldey: beautiful day at sea today, with only some passing clouds and a warm sun. However, the cold and strong northerly wind froze me and some other passenger, making it hard to stay outside without an overall. On top of that the sea was a bit choppy, making the sail a bit uncomfortable to some. In any case, the captain sailed with the wind, which made it feel like there was none of it anymore, improving the situation. The day was quite slow, with some quick appearance of harbor porpoises, minke and humpback whales which, although coming very close to the ship, seemed to be intent on going after some food and didn't spend too much time on the surface, making it difficult to follow them. In any case, everyone was able to observe them for a while, making for another great day at sea.

-Francesco Golin

Report from Eldey: We battered through the icelandic wind and waves to find some lovely animals, and despite the slightly harsher spotting conditions we managed to find quite a few animals rather early into the trip, as our first minke whale made an appearance shortly before another minke whale. We slowed for them but the minke whales remained rather elusive, surfacing and diving again very quickly, making photos quite tricky to get. However soon after leaving the minke's, we managed to find a humpback whale on the horizon interacting with 2 white beaked dolphins. It appears it was a negative interactive because the humpback was rolling just under the surface before diving again, and the dolphins began to disappear into the distance. We decided to try and follow this humpback for some time but the individual was taking long dives and not giving us much of a chance to photograph it, when all of a sudden it unexpectedly breached right in front of us. As I had spotted another humpback appraching it could be that this indivudal was trying to communicate to its friend. In response the second humpback whale began to tail slap repeatedly right in front of us while the first decided to come up very close to the boat and have a look at us. Shortly after this peak in the trip the whales both calmed a little and we sadly had to start our journey back to the harbour. We found 2 minke whales, 2 humpback whales, 2 white beaked dolphins this day.

-Liam van Walsum

Report from Eldey : It was super windy when we started to venture out looking for cetaceans. After an hour a lot of blows appeared in the horizon, we could see a lot of blows but not much the bodies and to our surprise all of those blows appeared to be minke whales. So powerful blows and so many we always expect them to be humpbacks, but no this time all minkes. We went around in the area and spotted at least a good 5 individuals minke whales. It was great to see so many of them despite the wind. We observed some atlantic puffins, gannets and guillemots during the minke sighting. After some time in the area it was already time to head back home, with the midnight sun in our faces.

- Melanie Magnan

Northern fulmar, Atlantic puffin, arctic skua, lesser black-backed gull, herring gull, arctic tern, kittiwake, greylag goose, Eurasian oystercatcher, black guillemot.