Tour at 17:00
It was quite windy and it was raining cats and dogs when we headed out to Faxaflói bay looking for whales. After searching for some time we found an area with lots of diving Gannets, and I mean lots. Many hundreds of them. And in this area we spotted also many Minke Whales, at least 6-8 animals. Some of them came very close to the boat and some we only saw in the distance. It was interesting to observe the interaction between whales and birds as both were feeding from the same shoals of fish. So very good tour;)
Tour at 14:00
We started the tour at Akurey but there wasn´t many Puffins. There was quite a few offshore though. We travelled out into Faxaflói and it wasn´t long until we saw our first Minke Whale. We stayed with the Minke for a while and it surfaced less than 100 meters from our boat, before it disappeared. We then went to where Hafsúlan was and there was another Minke Whale that was awesome, really interacted with the vessel, surfacing less than 5 meters from us and surfing the waves. We stayed with this Minke for a long time as it was such a great encounter. Fantastic Tour.
Tour at 13:00
The wind picked up a bit and fog emerged on the water surface so it looked quite mystical. We sailed for a long, long time until we found some animals. It was the Minke Whale. He only showed his back once but at least he showed a big part of his body. Then we didn´t find anything for a long time so we started heading to the puffin Island. On the way we spotted a small group of breaching White beaked Dolphins. They were jumping up to 3 meter high in the air, making big white splashes. On the same time, all of a sudden a Minke Whale came up just 3 meters from the boat. We didn´t expect this at all so it was very surprising for passengers and crew members. It didn´t show up again. Then we sailed a bit further to find the dolphins again. And so we did. They were jumping around the boat so we could see the whole body and fluke. It was an amazing end to this adventure tour.
Tour at 10:00
We sailed straight into Faxaflói for this tour and it took us about 50 minutes before we got to the area our sister vessel Hafsúlan was. Hafsúlan called us and told us about a Basking Shark so we were on our way, we were nearly there but our attention got caught by a Minke Whale that suddenly surfaced less than 100 meters from us. We were hoping to see the Basking Shark later on but it wasn´t seen again and there were Minke Whales surfacing everywhere. On one occasion we had two Minkes, one on each side of the boat. There were quite a few birds in the area too, Diving Gannets, Fulmars, Kittiwakes, Arctic Terns, Skuas, Gulls, Puffins and Guillemots. On the way to Puffin Island we also saw a couple of Minkes so all in all we must of seen at least 8 different individuals. We went to Akurey and there were some Puffins but mainly sitting on the water around the island.
Tour at 09:00
We sailed out in a nice whale watching weather. First specie that we spotted on the tour was the famous Minke Whale. He didn´t come up very often so we sailed further on until we spotted a rather big dorsal fin. This was the Basking Shark! The Basking Shark is the second largest living shark, after the whale shark. It was very relaxed on the surface so we could see the dorsal fin very clearly. On the tour we spotted few more Minke Whales, some curious but some less curious.