Tour at 20:30
Report from Hafsúlan: We went our way full of hope, since the day has been very successful so far. Nothing could have prepared us for the amazing tour that was coming ! At first we went quite far away to try to find cetaceans. The trip was smooth, there was almost no wind and the temperature was nice. There was an important cloud cover but the light shining in the background was telling us that the midnight sun was ready to show itself, in due time. When we arrived, the Icelandic weather played a joke on us, sending rain drops on our heads and blowing heavy winds. As the swells shook us and as we had difficulties to find any species, doubt could have seized our hearts. But the passengers and the crew were willing to have fun and we kept on our way in a very high spirit. Finally, we spotted one white-beaked dolphin, traveling very fast. We tried to followed the animal but quickly it had disappeared. In our efforts to find it again, we noticed splashes far away. A very agile cetacean was showing us impressive aerial displays. As my mind first could not process that such agile creature could be a whale, I made a beginner mistake and claimed to be a jumping white- beaked dolphin. But as we got closer, the acrobat kept on getting bigger and bigger, and in the end a smelly breath of rotten fish confirmed that it was a breaching minke whale ! It was utterly mind-blowing to witness the immense size of the splashes and to see this big animal flying through the air over and over ! When we got closer the whale had calmed down and allowed us few close looks before disappearing. Running out of time we headed back to Reykjavik only to have our way cut by a pod of leaping white-beaked dolphins ! We thought that the trip could not be better and these dolphins proved we were wrong. The weather suddenly calmed also ! At least 6 dolphins were jumping in front of us, leading us to Reykjavik. Never such an awesome escort had been seen before ! Few kilometers before we arrived at Reykjavik, the dolphins left us and we finished our tour in a beautiful panorama, the midnight sun coloring the sky and the mountains in orange. We even had a thick rainbow next to Keilir Mountain ! This tour was definitively one of the best of the season so far.
- Guillaume Calcagni
Tour at 17:00
Report from Hafsúlan: This afternoon we went out looking for the many animals found on the morning tours. The wind conditions were still very incredible, giving us the change to see animals even further away. This trip was a bit more unpredictable then our encounters earlier that day. We had some very close sightings to the boat with many minke whales, at some point we had a minimum of 4 different individuals coming to the surface nearly at the same time. Additionally we also saw many white- beaked dolphins again, seeing them jump, backslap, tail slap and other very interesting behavior. Enjoying the animals around the boat made us lose track of time and so we had to quickly move back to the harbor, seeing many more marine mammals on the way. Estimating around 7 different minke whales and at least more then 20 white- beaked dolphins in total.
- Michaela Buchbauer
Tour at 14:00
Report from Elding: The conditions were still really good in the afternoon, and the sun was still shining upon us. Like this morning, we soon spotted a group of white-beaked dolphins (total ~40). They were spread out and traveling next to us, before they started leaping and jumping out of the water! It seemed like they were still in the right mood for our passengers as they put on an incredible show for us. A few of them came close to us, so that we could see the white stripe along their bodies shining underneath the water surface. After a while, we decided to leave them be and started looking for minke whales. They were a little more sneaky than this morning, but we still managed to find 3 minke whales in an area, and after we waited patiently, they surfaced within 50 m from our boat. Of course it's great to see the minkes, but the adorable dolphins really spoiled us today!
- Hanna Michel
Tour at 13:00
Report from Hafsúlan: We headed out to the same area from the morning tour. We encountered 5 shy minke whales throughout the tour. At the end of our time in the whale spotting area we came upon a huge flock of diving gannets and other species of sea birds hunting in the same area and there we spotted one minke whale that was in the mood for whale watching. We also two pods of white beaked dolphins, one pod of at least 5 individuals on our way out and one pod of 3 individuals on our way back to harbor.
- Svala Jónsdóttir
Tour at 10:00
Report from Elding: An amazing trip this morning! It took only about 30-40 min of sailing from Reykjavik until we found the first pod of 4 white-beaked dolphins. They were resting and not moving a lot, so that we could easily observe them for a while. As we moved on, we soon found a feeding minke whale, and it didn't take long to spot 3-4 individuals of this small whale species around us, and also a small pod of 2-4 harbor porpoises traveling through the area. While we were watching the minke whales, more dolphins showed up near our boat and soon we were surrounded by several pods of the white-beaked dolphins (total ~50). We could see some of them jumping out of the water in some distance, while others were staying close by, checking us out and swimming right next to us and underneath our boat. It seemed like they were just playing around and socializing in front of our boat while. Even when we tried to find another minke whale, which we found indeed, we could still see dolphins around us. On the way back to the harbor, we came across another pod of 5 white-beaked dolphins. Dolphins everywhere on this tour!
- Hanna Michel
Tour at 09:00
Report from Hafsúlan: On this very beautiful morning we went out from the harbor in search of cetaceans. The weather was as good as it could get, there was basically no wind and we had sunshine throughout the tour. While traveling west we encountered a huge amount of white- beaked dolphins going towards Reykjavik (40+ animals), looking like a long and big wall of dolphins traveling together. There seemed to be several pods moving towards the same direction, but not too close to each other. In the rest of our tour many more animals did show themselves, seeing around five minke whales. Sometimes these mammals were found very close together. At some point we had to head back to the harbor, leaving us with an incredible experience we will never forget.
- Michaela Buchbauer
Birds encountered on today's tours: northern gannets, northern fulmars, common guillemots, black guillemots, puffins, kittiwakes, iceland gulls, manx shearwaters, eider- ducks, arctic terns, greater black backed gulls and lesser black backed gulls.
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