Monday, 18th July

Tour at 20:30

Report from Eldey: One of our favourite tours of the day mainly because of our awesome onboard musician/s and the breath-taking sunset. Tonight was another night like this but on top of the scenery, sunset and incredible and funny musician 'Bjarni' we also had the Faxafloi top four. Humpback whale, minke whale, white beaked-dolphins and harbour porpoises. The white-beaked dolphins were first spotted by splashes but they were on a mission and difficult to track them but estimate about 5-10 individuals. We soon got distracted by a blow from a humpback whale, same individual we have been seeing the last couple of days. On the way home we saw some more splashes from dolphins, as we got closer we couldn't find them but we did find a minke whale. The porpoises were seen now and again, at least 3 pods with a total of about 10-15 but as soon as I told the passengers where they were, they vanishes. Cute little guys but a pain in the bottom to show them to the passengers on board tonight. 

- Megan Whittaker

Tour at 17:00

Report from Eldey: Again, the sea conditions were extremely smooth, only a small wind was starting to arising. But since no whitecaps where on the bay, we were hoping that the spotting of the animals would be an easy task today. We headed towards the position of a humpback whale that other boats had spotted previously, although it was really far away... almost in the limit of the whale watching area! It wasn't an easy task to approach the animal, since it seemed to be traveling out of the bay, and it took more than 80 minutes to approach the animal. At the end we managed to get to the individual, and we spent about 20 minutes sailing with it, all the time heading out of the bay. This quiet humpback was surfacing all the time, and it was clear that the animal was just traveling. We were running out of time and had to go back. But just as we turned back we spotted another humpback whale. And suddenly, the animal breached just in front of us! Mostly all of the passengers saw all the body of the animal completely out of the water! We continued our way back home and saw a third humpy swimming about 100 meters away from our position. So, definitely, the humpbacks where the star of the show in this exciting tour!

- Alberto Alejandro

Tour at 14:00

Report from Elding: The sun was shinning and the boat was packed! the sea conditions were not the best at first but it got better with time. A lot of white caps that made our search harder than expected from the previous tour. The wind had picked up a bit from the morning but passengers did not seem to worry much about it. Many of them were on top deck sunbathing! after 50 minutes of sailing we saw a humpback whale and a couple of harbour porpoises! this was one of the best encounters I´ve had so far this year. Very friendly feeding individuals (Especially the humpback). There were a lot of birds and fish in the area that made me think it was feeding. It also went for some deep dives in a row. It displayed different kinds of behaviours. It did some lob tailing (lateral fluke slapping) that left the audience in awe. It´s always great to see the reaction of the passengers. Very unbelievable. I think it did that because it was fishing and it just tried to knock the fish out so it´d be easier for it to eat it. It also pooped for at least 3 times in front of us! 3 big stains of feces behind the animal proved it. People were a bit confused but I just clarified it on the microphone. Nothing wrong about it! better out than in they say. Anyway, after some very close surfacings (about 5 meters from the boat!) we had to head back to the harbour but not without a smile upon our faces. Lovely trip and humpback whale!

- Jorge Pascual

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: Again we went out in awesome sea conditions and lovely weather conditions, full of hopes to find cetaceans on the tour. We headed out in to the bay and after about 50 min came across a minke whale that surfaced in front of the boat in a few hundred meters distance. Unfortunately, it only surfaced one and then we didn´t see it again. However, there was a pod of white-beaked dolphins close by that we saw jumping out of the water. There were about 10 individuals in this pod including several calves and juveniles! Some very playful claves also jumped out of the water continuously and we could adore them for a good amount of time. Then we decided to head further out to look for other species, maybe another minke whale to get a better look at it. However, we didn´t manage to find any more whales or dolphins on this tour, even though we covered a large distance and there were a lot of feeding birds all around. So, the cool dolphins remained the single highlight of the tour!

- Hanna Michel

Tour at 10:00

Report from Elding: What a beautiful day to be out on the water! The sun was shining and the sea was calm offering excellent spotting conditions. We made our way out in to the bay and saw a number of sea bird species flying around and enjoyed the beautiful landscape of the Snaefellsnes Peninsula. After about 30-40 minutes of sailing we heard from our other boat that they were watching white-beaked dolphins. We headed over to the location they had last seen them and enjoyed watching two of them swimming fairly close to the boat, revealing their white beaks and the white patterns on their flanks. They were swimming apart from one another and eventually swam away from us. We heard from another of our boats that there was a humpback whale close by, so we left the dolphins to swim away in peace and headed towards the other boat and the whale. We soon saw the visible blow of a humpback whale. It was spending quite a bit of time under the water between taking a breath at the surface, but we did see it surface several times. The whale fluked a few times too, something which we always enjoy seeing, though it did not reveal its flukes particularly well. It became apparent that this humpback had a chunk missing from one of it's flukes. We don't know what caused this, there could be a number of different reasons such as being bitten by an orca or perhaps it was a victim of entanglement in fishing gear, a serious and common threat to cetaceans, but despite this thankfully the whale seemed to be unaffected by it. Eventually, it swam away from us so we left it in peace and started heading back to the harbour.

- Julia Benson

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: We woke up this morning with the most quiet and peaceful of the seas. Absolutely no waves were disturbing the surface of the crystalline waters of the Faxa bay this morning. Full of high hopes and positive perspectives, we sailed out from the old harbour of Reykjavik. And we had in front of ourselves a really busy tour indeed! The first species that appeared in the bay was the minke whale. We approached the animal and stood with it for a while, having the opportunity to take a look at it really close. We shared some minutes with this small curious minky, trying to learn and observe a little bit more about the nature of this animal. We left, just to encounter a humpback whale slowly traveling in the bay. We had a pretty cool close look at the animal, no more far away than 30 m.The sea was that clear that we managed to see the white flippers of the animal underneath the water surface! And just right close to this humpy, a large pod of 12 - 14 white beaked dolphins appeared. The amazing thing of this animals was that there were some small calfs swimming along with the mothers. And this little ones seemed to be in a really good mood, since they were jumping and leaping all the time! Time was running out a little, but in our way back home we also managed to see the small shadows of a small pod of 2-3 individuals of harbour porpoises, swimming really close to another minky whale! A really spectacular and active tour!

- Alberto Alejandro

Bird species seen on today`s tours include: northern gannet, juvenile northern gannet, northern fulmar, kittiwake, lesser black-backed gull, common guillemot, Atlantic puffin, Arctic skua, Artic tern, black guillemot.