Friday, 31 July

Tour at 20:30

Report from Hafsúlan: Quite choppy on the water this evening but as it was the last midnight tour our passengers came anyway. Once we were out though it wasn´t so bad and the sunset, full moon over reykjavik and the wildlife made up for it all. The flocks of birds were numerous feeding above the shadow of bait balls (big shoals of fish), terns, puffins, gulls, skuas, guillemots. We saw a blow of what we persume was a humpback whale, passengers saw it too a few times but nothing so sure we could confirm. Obviously not on a whale watching mood we moved on. We then not only saw a minke whale but also smelt it. Stinky minke! Surfaced a few times and then left us. White-beaked dolphins were the star of the show with body slamming, high leaps and calves in tow. A pod of 4-5 individuals. On the way home we enjoyed the moon getting brighter and rising over Reykjavik. A great tour to end our midnight tours on.

- Megan Whittaker

Tour at 17:00

Report from Hafsúla: This tour was one of my favourite tours. The winds were picking up but the underwave was dying down so even though it was very chilly it was only bumpy when the swell was on our side on this afternoon tour. We located Charlie the humpback whale again and spent some time with it acting shy like on the earlyer tour but when we had decided to leave Charlie decided that it was time for an acrobatic workout and did a full breach (100% of its body out of the water) right in front of us! Charlie continued breaching and peckslapping (slapping the surface of the sea with the forearms) and at one point Charlie was breaching at 2 o'clock and then a minke whale breached further away at 3 o'clock! Me and the reasearchers weren't sure if it was a minke at first but then we kept a close look at the area and only saw a minke surfacing 4 times and no humpback so it's got to have been a minke. This happens extremely rarely! Charlie was still doing breaches and playing around when we needed to turn back so the next trip would start at the right time. It even breached just 80 m away from our boat! On our way back we encountered a small pod of white beaked dolphins but didn't have time to stop to look closely at them and also a huge flock of birds close to Grótta.

An amazing experience for everyone involved!

-Svala Jónsdóttir

Tour at 14:00

Report from Eldey: The conditions were a little better than in the morning and the sun was still shining, we had a smoother tour because we had sightings quite close to shore. It took just 45 minutes this time to reach the area where we had a humpback whale, this was actually a different one to the two we found this morning so it is good to know there are many humpbacks in the bay. We followed this whale for around 30 minutes as it travelled through the area, it was often just travelling so it wasn´t acting too exciting but it still gave us many great sightings. On the way back we found a minke whale in the area too! A nice day with both of our common whales.

- Jack Ball

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúla: The winds had calmed a bit since the morning and the sun was peaking out of the cloud cover when we left from Reykjavík harbour. We headed out to try and locate the humpback that we'd spotted on our earlier tour. We didn't find the same individual but we did spot another humpback whale! This individual was a bit smaller but it didn't have any ghost nets. It was a bit shy and didn't show us the underside of it's flukes (endo of the tail) but we were very certain that this individual was a whale called Charlie since it had a big C scar on its left side and a white stripe on the top of its dorsal fins. It came close to us and even went under our boat. We spent about 50 minutes watching it and then had to head back towards harbour.

- Svala Jónsdóttir

Tour at 10:00

Report from Eldey: Though the sun was shining bright the sea was not the same and we had some rough conditions this morning. As we sailed out we heard reports early in the tour that other boats had found whales some distance from the city. It took us just over an hour to reach this area and we managed to find two humpback whales milling about! One of them was extremely active and was constantly surfacing and diving whereas the other was resting and we only got a few looks at this one in total. We spent around 45 minutes watching the active one before heading home after a nice day.

- Jack Ball

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúla: We went out from Reykjavík in pretty windy conditions this morning. As expected, the sea was rough and after a while quite a few people onboard had green faces. It was still enjoyable for most passengers, though, and after about 1,5 hours we finally reached a humpback whale on the way to another individual that we had been informed about by another whale watching boat. So, we decided to stay with this one and good some great looks at this humpback as it surfaced only a few meters away from it. Unfortunately, we could see that it was entangled in a fishing net and couldn't break free. At some point, the animal started breaching a few times and then continued head-slapping (slapping its head violently on the water surface). On our way back to the harbour we informed the coast guard about the entanglement of this humpback whale and hope that the are able to help this amazing animal. 

Birds seen on todays tour: northern fulmar, puffin, black-backed gull, kittiwake, eider duck, gannet, juvenile gannet, arctic tern, arctic skua, common guillemot.