Monday, 22 September 2014

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: It rained more and the wind was getting stronger with more waves on the bay so the boat rocked more than it had done this morning. We headed south to get shelter from Reykjanes peninsula but it was not easy to find a lot of life on the way. We saw some sea birds flying around but they were mainly scattered over a big area. It was not until we turned around and started to head back to land that we got the first news of cetaceans and that was from another whale watching boat, they had spotted a whale. When we arrived we could also see that animal, it was a very friendly minke whale. It came up in front of us, it kept on coming closer and closer until it finally went under the boat and came up on the other side. We go wonderful sightings of this minke whale, it was always very close to us! Even when we decided to keep on going to land it seemed like it had also changed directions and was also heading towards Reykjavik so we got a little more time with it while sailing back!

- Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: The sky was mostly covered with clouds but the sun was able to shine on us between them on this morning tour. It rained a little for a short time but we could enjoy beautiful rainbows when we looked further out on the bay. We went to an area where we had been lucky on previous tours, there we found a lot of northern gannets that were diving down for fish so we decided to slow down and look for the cetaceans. We had not been searching for so long when we spotted a minke whale in only 100 meter distance. This minke whale was just milling around in circles coming up very frequently so we could easily follow its movements. We just stopped the boat to observe this amazing animal and it seemed to not bother our presence at all. The whale swam few times toward us and came very close, it might even have gone under the boat at one point! We saw one other minke whale on the tour but that one spent a long time under water and was hard to spot. On the way back to the harbour we saw another species, a group of 3-4 very cute harbour porpoises! We could watch them go by for only a little time until they diapered from our sight.

- Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir

Birds seen on today's tour include: northern gannet,northern fulmar, common guillemot, black-backed gull, glaucous gull, kittiwake, black-headed gull, eider duck.