Monday, 2 August 2010

Tour at 17:00

The wind had dropped down and the weather was quite nice. We started our tour by visit the Puffin island. And again lots of Puffins around the island. Then we headed out to Faxaflói. After sailing for about 7 minutes we spotted one Minke whale. It was the same whale we spotted this morning and it was in the same area and still in a good mood. So we spent a lot of time around this whale. One time it came up just 10 meters in front of us. Amazing. So a very good tour again.

 

Tour at 14:00

We started the tour by visiting the puffin island. There were only 5 -10 puffins on the Island but we saw more of them out at sea later on. After sailing for 10 minutes after the Island, we found a Basking Shark ! We could see the dorsal fin out of the water but when we got closer it disappeared. We stayed for a while to check if it would come up again but he never did. So we sailed further out and spotted a perfect group of White Beaked Dolphins. They were playful, swimming around the boat so we could see them clearly underwater. Sometimes they breached around us so we could see the whole body out of water. When they disappeared we went on for the search of bigger animals and very close to the harbor we found a Minke Whale. This was probably the same one from the 10 o´clock tour. It always came up 3 times and then went down for a deeper dive. It was a really nice end to a great tour.

 

Tour at 13:00

The wind had really calmed down over the last hour or so, it was overcast but the visability was good. We started the tour by visiting Akurey (Puffin Island) and saw many Puffins sitting on the waters surface but not so many sitting on the island itself. It was very nice to see so many around the island though. We then sailed for a while before we saw a large fin very far in the distance, yes we spotted a Basking Shark. We stayed with the shark for a while and watched it slowly moving through the water column filtering the water from the tiny zooplankton of which they feed on. We then left the Basking Shark to it and went further offshore in search for the whales. We came to an area where there were two Minke Whales which surfaced quite a few times and on occasion less than 100 meters from our boat. We then got word from our sister vessel about a pod of White-beaked Dolphins which were really enjoyable to watch. We saw many seabirds on this tour, Gannets, Fulmars, Kittiwakes, Arctic Skuas, Arctic Terns, Gulls, Eider Ducks, Geese, Puffins, Guillemots, Manx Shearwaters,  and Storm Petrels. Very nice tour.

 

Tour at 10:00

We didn´t have to sail far out until we spotted a Minke Whale. It was just 10 minutes away from the harbour. We stayed with this whale for a long time and watched it come up to the surface many times, sometimes close to the boat and sometimes more far away. Sometimes we could hear the breath of the animal´s blow and at one point we could smell it, what a stinky minke it was ! We also went to the puffin-Island. There weren´t many puffins there but some of them were on the sea around the Island.

 

Tour at 09:00

In some  rough weather we sailed out to Faxaflói bay. And very soon we spotted a Minke Whale surfacing very close to the boat. The whale was very close to shore this time. And it was also in a very good whale watching mood. We followed this whale for nearly one hour. Sometimes it came very close so all our passengers could have a good look at the animal. We also spotted a small group of Harbour Porpoises, surfacing few times and at one point 4-5 animals came surfing a wave all in the same time. Beautiful. We ended this great tour by visiting the Puffin island Lundey where we saw many hundreds Puffins. Nice rough tour.