Monday, 13 August 2012

Tour at 20:30

Report from Elding : We started the tour at Engey, this island with a Puffin colony recovering slowly. We saw few Puffin but really good view on them standing in front of theire burrow. There was also a load of black-Backed seagull, fulmars, kittywakes ... We then headed offshore straight where we saw some Minke Whales in the previous tour but unfortunately they were all gone probably further out. We spent a lot of time searching in the bay but no luck this evening. We still enjoyed the sailing, the good weather and the live music on the way back. I am sure the passangers will have better luck next time.

Tour at 14:00

Report from Elding: beautiful calm sea, clouds at the beginning but sunny at the end of the tour. Very nice tour with two close minke whales and 1 more further in the distance and awesome pods of harbour porpoises again! We had a nice visitor onboard standing on one of the white life rafts' container, a lesser black backed gull was resting on our boat for a while and looked at us just chilling. Today was really an exceptionnal day for porpoises watching which came so close to the boat on several occasions and even towards us on the left side going under the boat that we could see their beautiful brown bodies just under the surface. The second minke whale we saw longer was easy to follow and didnt dive for long in between two surfacing behaviours. We saw the puffins on Engey at the end since they were none of them on akurey at the beginning.

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: after a disappointing morning tour we went out again with a little feeling of tension in our stomachs. The sea was mirror calm and virtually no wind, same as in the morning, but no whales were seen then. The question was: where were they? It turned out they were there but had not been in a show mood in the morning. This tour was brilliant! We saw easy-going Minke Whales on two seperate occasions and managed to stay with them for a good while, enjoying many surfaces from these beautiful animals and once a lunge-feed! In between we then had some of the very best Harbour Porpoises we have had in a while. We saw twice small pods, each pod 3-6 animals, they did not mind our presence whatsoever and even came towards us at times! What a wonderful break it was from the past few days of bad weather and no sightings!

Tour at 10:00

Report from Elding: A bit of wind and rain but warm wind and we didn't feel cold. The sea was good but there were a lot of mist and fog. We saw really awesome harbour porpoises, for quite a while and not far from the boat, so many of them today in Faxafloi bay. We found one minke whale which was going really for long dives and surfacing far from us around 100 meters never less. But still an enjoyable tour at the end with again amazing porpoises watching and everybody could see the minke whale as well even if it was far.

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: The morning was a bit windy and moody but we started our tour by going to the puffin island Lundey. There we saw quite many puffins sitting on the sea and also flying around but not too many of them on the island it self. Many other species of birds were there as well, such as the Black Backed Gull, Kittiwake, Fulmars, Black Guillemot, Common Eiders, Artic Terns, and more. Then we saild on out Faxaflói bay to see what the bay had to offer today. We searched for a quite a while and finally we spotted a pod of Harbour Poroises. After looking at these nice and very calm Porpoises we found out that there were not only one pod of Porpoises there but two! After spending a nice time there and getting a good look at the animals we sailed on in hope of seeing something else in the bay today. But we were out of luck this time and after a while looking it was time to sail back to Reykjavík. On our way back we did though spot another pod of Harbour Porpoises and it was very nice getting a good last look at them before it was time to go back to Reykjavik. Since we truly want our passengers to see the best the bay has to offer we gave out complimentary tickets so our passengers can have a nother go at spotting the bigger whales in Faxaflói bay.

Birds seen on today's tours: Northern Gannets, Puffins, Fulmars, Lesser Black Backed Gulls, Arctic Terns, Arctic Skuas, Common Guillemots, Glaucous Gulls, Eider Ducks.

Pictures taken from the 14:00 by Megan Whittaker