Monday, 27 July 2015

Tour at 20:30

Report from Hafsúlan: Less wind than in the afternoon and the sun peaking out from the clouds, set a nice mood for this midnight tour. We set course towards the humpback whale far out in the bay. It took nearly two hours before we located the whale. Before that we passed by a pod of 2 white-beaked dolphins traveling east. The humpback whale seemed to be feeding, going for deeper dives almost all the time. We could stay with the animal for a long time and at one point we could witness a tail-slap! Large flocks of kittiwakes were resting on the water surface and many gannets flew by. We were really far out in Faxaflói, further out than this guide has been before. The journey back took some time but we had Bjarni onboard entertaining us with live music and fresh memories of a very gentle humpback!

- Marcus Bergström    

Tour at 14:00

Report from Eldey: Since we knew that our sister boat Hafsúlan had seen a humpback whale in Faxaflói this morning, we decided to head towards the same area on this tour hoping that it would still be around. It took quite some time to get there but as we were getting closer we could see a few huge splashes in same distance where the humpback whale was breaching. The last time it was breaching, we were close enough to see the whole body of the animal above the water surface. When we slowly approached this whale, it was tail-slapping close to another whale watching boat. But after a short while this boat left so that we had the humpback whale all to ourselves; and so we could spend quite some time with it and watch it traveling slowly next to us and surfacing only 20 m away. We got back quite late from this tour, but it was definitely worth trying to find the humpback whale and all our passengers were happy! 

- Hanna Michel

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: We went out in beautiful weather and had high hopes for this tour. Our first encounter of the tour was a minke whale. This individual came up pretty close to the boat two times at least but it was traveling pretty fast so we decided to head further out. We had seen a humpback whale on our previous tour so we headed to the same area as this morning. We had to sail a little bit further than earlier as the humpback was traveling north but eventually we spotted the same humpback as this morning, our good friend Þröstur. Þröstur was surfacing often and all the passengers got to see his beautiful tail or fluke a couple of times before we had to head back to the harbour. We sailed home in absolutely amazing weather with the smile on our faces.

- Katrín Björnsdóttir

Tour at 10:00

Report from Eldey: We sailed out into Faxaflói from Reykjavík in sunshine and great sea conditions this morning. After about 30 min we found our first minke whale. These small whales can be very elusive sometimes; however, this one didn't mind our presence and we could watch it for a long time just surfacing around us and giving as great opportunities for pictures. After we moved on to search for cetaceans a little further offshore, it didn't take long until we came across a fun pod of 8 white-beaked dolphins. First, they were traveling at high speed but then they calmed down and came closer to us and surfaced all around us. While we were watching the dolphins, we spotted another minke whale a little further in the distance and tried to get a closer look at this individual. Like the first minke whale, this one wasn't shy at all and just traveled next to us. All of the sudden, another pod of 6-8 white-beaked dolphins showed up and was leaping and jumping in front of us in some distance. As we headed back to the harbour, we came across another minke whale but didn't slow down since we were running out of time. A great tour with relaxed minke whales and curious dolphins! 

- Hanna Michel

Tour at 09:00

Report on Hafsúlan: The sun was shining as we made our way out on to the bay. We were hopeful after the successful  day yesterday. So we headed straight out in to the bay going to the area where we knew humpbacks were. Out on the water we soon spotted one of the other whale watching boats with a minke whale. I spotted a large blow about 2 kilometres beyond the minke and it could only mean one thing. As we approached, whoosh came the sound of the blow of a large humpback whale. This animal was really good to us showing its fluke constantly and only going for 2 minute dives. After about 20 minutes with the individual we had to head back to port and we all enjoyed the smooth sailing back to port. 

-Tommy Torrades

Bird species seen on today's tours include: northern gannets, northern fulmars, kittiwakes, arctic terns, european storm petrel, lesser black-backed gulls, atlantic puffins, arctic skuas, long-tailed skuas, great skua (3 species of skuas, not bad!), common guillemots and eider ducks.