Tour at 20:30
Report from Elding: It was for sure our best midnight sun tour in this season! We had beautiful weather and calm see, perfect condition to enjoy never-ending sunset, landscape and listen to music. But tonight it was not our musician who stole the show. It take as a while before we saw something. Close to Akranes city we watched some splashes but it was a false alarm - just rocks under the water. We sailed further, in the direction where another boat found a humpback whale. We saw big blow in a distance but we didn't have a chance to approach this animal because we encounter pod of killer whales! What an amazing and beautiful they are! We saw big male with spectacular tall dorsal fin and few females which at least one of them had a calf by side. Kids on board were screaming, almost crying because of emotions and I'm sure that all of us felt same excited like this children. Then suddenly in front of our boat a minke whale poped out, we saw it twice but we needed to change direction to avoid collision with this whale - that how close it was! We spend with orcas as much time as we could, and on the way back life music made this trip complete.
- Ewa Malinowska
Tour at 17:00
Report from Eldey: This tour was so full of surprises it's hard to put it in words. The sun was shining, the water surface flat. Just 15 minutes out of the harbour, we already encountered a minke whale that we could stay with and watch for about 20 minutes. Although we could have stayed longer, being so close to the harbour we knew from experience that going further out in Faxafloi would be what we have to do to find more animals, even other species. With hardly any wind, we already spotted a very large blow - which is what we see from humpback whales - from very far away. Sure enough, we found the humpback whale very quickly. We stayed with it for a few surfaces, also seeing another minke whale, but then spotted something far more special. A pod of Orca!!! There were probably 7 of them, including a calf and a male with a very large dorsal fin. We stayed with them for over an hour, as they were curious about our boat as well. Thus we could really just enjoy this incredible and very rare encounter. It was like a dream - 3 species, one of them a rarely encountered in Faxafloi. My cheeks still hurt from smiling and I am sure everyone on this trip has made memories for a lifetime!!!
- Sabrina Voswinkel
Tour at 13:00
Report from Hafsúlan: The sea conditions were much better than expected, we had prepared for another bumpy cold ride but this tour was actually fairly smooth and warm. Although it is easier to spot cetaceans smoother conditions it turned out to be more challenging than on the 10 o´clock tour. First two sightings of the tour were very elusive minke whales that were only seen few hundred meters away from the boat. After almost two hours we heard of a humpback whale that had been seen on another boat closer to Reykjavík. On the way we spotted 3 minke whales, two that traveled together! While we followed these two minke whales we sailed past a pod of 7-8 harbour porpoises! The humpback whale was not as easy and only surfaced twice before we had to sail back to Reykjavík, both times in more than 500 meters distance. The tour ended with a quick look at a minke whale only 15 minutes from the harbour, this was a nice surprise as we don't encounter these animals often so close to Reykjavík!
-Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir
Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey: The sun was shinning at last during all the afternoon tour. We took a little bit of time to encounter the first individual of the tour, a minke whale! Judging by the amount of feeding seabirds, the animal was taking advantage of the huge amount of fish encountered in the bay today. That actually made things a little bit harder for us, since it was quite unpredictable to know where the animal was about to surface again. Lucky for us we did encounter around 3 - 4 more minkys during the rest of the tour and, although still quite random, we had a couple of loving close encounters with them. A really enjoyable tour out in the Faxa bay!
- Alberto Alejandro
Tour at 10:00
Report from Hafsulan: While the weather was good, we did encounter some choppy conditions out on sea with winds from the North. As we got closer to our main sighting area, we saw lots of feeding seabirds. Flocks of different seagulls, northern gannets, some arctic terns were diving into the water to catch some fish. Amongst these feeding sea birds we did spot some minke whales, however they did not come up many times, making it difficult to follow / stay with them. The ones we saw appeared within 50 - 100m from the boat which was nice and most, if not all passengers got to take a good look at them. On our way following another minke whale, we spotted a pod of 3 harbour porpoises. They swam together, heading towards us for a bit. As most passengers were out to spot the minke, they appeared right in sight and we got a good look at them as well! While we would have liked to get more sightings and perhaps calmer sea conditions, this was a fun trip with some wildlife and great conditions to enjoy the landscape as well!
- Friedrich Rittner
Tour at 09:00
Report from Eldey: This morning sky seemed to be grey and an omen for a bad day, but it wasn't even close like that! The sun started to shine and we enjoyed a smooth ride until we found one of our main spotting areas. We were looking for seabirds, used as indicators for cetacean's presence and indeed we did! Particularly, today was crazy with them, we had thousands of them flying around and feeding. But of course we didn't go outside only for seabirds, we were there for whales and it didn't take too much till we saw them. We spotted our first minke whale in the middle of this frenetic bird's feast and as soon as we saw the first one, many more appeared at least 4 individuals were moving around the boat and we had several nice sightings extremely close to us, it was unbelievable! In the way back, we had two fast encounters with three harbour porpoises, we could even be able to see them under the water. It was nice experience to enjoy Faxafloi.
-Rodrigo A. Martinez Catalan
Bird species seen on todays tours: arctic skua, arctic tern, atlantic puffin, northern gannet, common guillemot, black guillemot, razorbill, manx shearwater, black-legged kittiwake, great black-backed gull, lesser black-backed gull, herring gull, leach's storm petrel, northern fulmar, and eider duck.
Status: RUNNING
We are sailing out from the Old Harbour in Reykjavik today. It is a bit cloudy but little to no wind. Hope you will be able to join us on our search of these magnificent animals
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