Monday, 13 May 2013

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: We sailed out this afternoon with a warm sun, which we definitely needed as the wind had picked up making the tour funnier with a bit of a roller coaster ride. We went to the same area where we left the Minke Whales on the last tour, we saw a blow and was very patient waiting for the whale to get closer and our patience was rewarded as the Minke Whale surfaced just 20 meters infront of us. Unfortunately, that was all we saw of the Minke Whales after a long and thorough search of the bay, but we did get a nice look at 2-3 Harbour Porpoises. We ended the tour at Akurey puffin island and saw all the puffins at home. Eventhough there was a lot of wildlife to see, we where not very successful with the whales so we gave our passengers complimentary tickets to come back again and hopefully with better luck.

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: We sailed out from Reykjavik harbour this morning with blue skies, warm sun but a bit of wind, which chilled the bone unless you had our lovely overalls on to keep you warm during the tour. We started at Puffin Island and saw many Puffins sitting on the waters surface paddling around and others nattering to themselves infront of their borrows. Then we headed offshore. Nature didn´t really get going until the end of the tour until we were on the way back to Reykjavik when both crew and passengers were starting to loss hope. Suddenly a blow was spotted behind the boat, we stopped and had a look and then we found ourselves surrounded with 4-5 Minke Whales which a couple of times only surfaced 20-30 meters from the boat. One of them even surface lunged with a mouth full of water and food, you could see the ventral pleats on the underside of the whale. It was incredible, Patience paid off.

Birds seen on todays tours included, Puffins, Gannets, Fulmars, Kittiwakes, Common Guillemots, Black-Backed Gulls, Glaucous Gulls, Great Skua, Arctic Terns,Cormorants, Eider Ducks, Brent Geese, Arctic Skua, Manx Shearwaters.

- Megan Whittaker