Friday, 9 August 2024

Today we will be operating our Classic Whale Watching on our lovely vessel Eldey at 9:00, 13:00 and 17:00, our just as lovely Hafsúlan at 11:00 and on our Elding I at 15:00 and 19:00. Our Premium Whale Watching tour will operate on Þruma I-V at 10:00, 12:00, 14:00, 16:00, 20:00. 

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 09:00, 11:00, 13:00, 15:00, 17:00, 19:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR |10:00, 12:00, 14:00, 16:00, 20:00

Report from Eldey: The sun was shining and the sea was calm as we sailed into what was about to become an incredible morning tour! We were very lucky to see no less than 5 humpback whales  this tour and multiple individuals even got very close to our boat! One humpback however seemed to be in an incredibly good mood today, as it kept alternating between sequences of multiple breaches and pec slapping for at least half an hour! We were incredibly lucky to see such spectacular behaviour in the bay here today and this morning's tour is one that we will cherish for a very long time!

- Milan Vansteelandt 

Report from Hafsulan: Fantastic experience today, in our 11 am tour. Initially, we had to deal with some strong winds when we left the harbour into the bay, which made it a bit of a challenge to find the whales, due to all the white caps the wind was creating on the water surface. But this did not stop us; soon enough, we spotted our 1st blows ahead of our ship´s bow. It wasn´t one, but 3 blows from humpback whales straight ahead of us. As we got to the area, we only had to wait a couple of minutes for the whales to come back to the surface, with 2 of the whales coming very close to our ship, with the 3rd one, further away, entertaining our passengers when the others went for a dive. After around half an hour, we left those whales and moved on with our tour, not staying longer with them to avoid distressing the animals. But in what has been a big blessing for the past few days, we rapidly found another group of 3 humpbacks to hang out with. We did the same process with them, spending half an hour in their presence, before continuing. And if 6 whales weren´t enough, we found a 7th whale on the way to Reykjavík, only a few kilometres from the harbour! 7 whales on a 3-hour tour, not bad at all, huh?

-Ricardo Mendes

Report from Eldey: There was wonderful sunshine and a low northerly wind over the bay today. I had barely finished the introduction speech when we spotted a humpback whale´s blow in the distance. We got to train our spotting skills as we approached this individual, and then out of nowhere he threw his peduncle fin up! We left and soon spotted three blows in the same area. We focused on one individual, Hooker, who was coming up regularly and sometimes very cloose to the boat. When we left, we saw that a fourth humpback whale had joined the area but we wanted to check out the North of the bay as more boats were coming. There, we found a humpback whale who was feeding among a huge flock of seabirds, and we could even see his breach from a mile away! An amazing tour with lots of activity and a great abundance of humpback whales today - thank you Faxaflói. 

- Eline van Aalderink

Report from Elding: We sailed once more to the open see, amazingly beautiful day, we got quite windy, however very excited for our next marine adventure. Sailing and sailing for 45 minutes more or less we saw the beautiful bay taking life with Humpback whales blowing in a scatter way, we where able to see two of them very close to us in front of a RIB boat, which made it a perfect moment for a picture, after 15 minutes we sailed fairly more and we got 3 more humpback whales, people where happy with big smiles in their faces, so we would called this a lovely day at the sea.

Claudia Albir

Report from Eldey: the weather was just as sunny and calm as earlier in the day so we were excited to once again, head back out into they bay. We had yet another amazing tour where, after we found the first humpback, we could just follow the blows around into the bay like stepping stones. in total we saw 5 humpback whales, some of them which were quite curious towards the boat and on multiple occasions came very close! We also got multiple amazing looks at the flukes and to top this evening off, we got to see the last whale of the tour breach twice! This was a spectacular ender to our evening so we incredibly satisfied we sailed back into port while the sun started to set behind us.

- Milan Vansteelandt

Report from Elding: It was an incredible tour this evening. After about 45 minutes of sail we found the first humpback whale! It was a really nice sighting, the whale spent a lot of time on the surface. In the distance we could see more humpbacks, so we went towards them. It was amazing, they were rolling and slapping the pectorals and one breached not far from us! The total number of humpbacks was around 7 individuals. It was full of puffins and terns and other sea birds and the sunset was gorgeous.

- Rodrigo Ruiz Esquide

Northern gannet, northern fulmar, common guillemot, Atlantic puffin, Arctic tern, herring gull, great black-backed gull, lesser black-backed gull, Arctic skua, black-headed gull, eider duck