Tour at 20.30
Report from Hafsulan: This tour was dolphinitely the best tour of the day!!! After about an our sailing towards the setting sun, we saw some black dorsal fins popping up in a few hundreds meter distance to the vessel. When getting closer we saw that we were watching a pod of 5-7 white-beaked dolphins. We followed them around and watched them feeding in the area for about 25 minutes. A little later we saw another group of about 4-6 of these dolphins. They swam in a big circle and finally joined the other group. Thus, we found ourselves surrounded by this big group and could watch them very closely. Some of them even started to leap and breach, which delighted everyone on board. With the perfectly calm sea and the sunset in the back we had perfect conditions for great dolphin pictures! Only some time later, when looking for more wildlife, we first smelled and then saw a minke whale. It surfaced a couple of times in about 50m to us, so that everyone could see this elegant whale. When we headed back to Reykjavik, we even saw another group of white-beaked dolphins (4-5), which also stayed very close to the boat. But then we really had to go back home, enjoying the great life music by Bjarny. A fantastic end of a great Icelandic summer day.
-Nicole Koestner
Tour at 17:00
Report from Eldey: Sailing out, conditions were still fantastic and almost tailor-made for whale watching. After only about 20 minutes we spotted a minke whale about 50 meters from the boat, which was awesome! Unfortunately this was the last sighting of the tour and this tour was deemed complimentary.
- Friedrich Rittner
Tour at 14:00
Report from Hafsúlan: The afternoon was even better than the morning with both wildlife and weather. The wind calmed down further and the sun was so strong. All the whale watching boats seemed to gather in an area in the distance so we decided to go and explore a new area, we were very lucky to find a pod of awesome white-beaked dolphins, at least 8 -10. They were particularly nice, maybe due to the lack of boats around them, all the companies do what they can to minimise stress to the animals this includes minimising boat numbers around animals were and when possible. The dolphins were easy to follow because a helpful arctic tern was following them also, we used the bird to slowly turn and get closer, the dolphins, which also included a baby, themselves were also coming and surfacing just meters from us. They were so beautiful. We left them in peace after an enjoyable encounter and search for other species. A minke whale was next, spotted first by one of our passengers. It did two surfaces and went on a longer dive, occasionally surfacing close to the boat. Minke´s seem to be scarce in the bay at the moment so it was really nice to have such a nice encounter with this individual. After, we got attracted to a very large flock of seabirds, you could see the fish the birds were catching. We shut of the engines and enjoyed the feeding frenzy of the birds to top off an already fantastic tour.
- Megan Whittaker
Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey: what a fantastic day to be out at sea, excellent sea conditions and definitely too warm for the overalls. The tour started with a sighting not far from Reykjavik, this was pod of 5 white beaked dolphins. We stayed with the dolphins for at least 15 minutes before we sailed further out. On the way out we passed by two other pods of dolphins, they really seemed to be everywhere on this tour! At one point the dolphins were super active, jumping high out of the water, forming large splashes that were easily spotted few kilometers away. Far out we spotted a minke whale surfacing in a middle of a huge flock of birds. In the same flock we also spotted 2 harbour porpoises. The minke was a little elusive but we managed to stay with it for at least 20 minutes. On the way we passed by another pod of white beaked dolphins, in total there must have been at least 20 dolphins seen on the whole trip. Definitely one of the best tours today.
-Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir
Tour at 10:00
Report from Hafsulan: What a wonderful day has been today in Reykjavik and in our favorite bay, Faxafloi. The weather has dramatically changed compared to yesterday. Today, we have had clear sky, no swell or waves, no trace of wind, so we couldn't´t have asked for anything better! In fact, the sun was so powerful that we had to use sun-cream, not a normal prevention measure here in Iceland. With all these good feeling we started our trip and we haven´t almost got used to this good weather conditions when we had our first encounter of the day just in the entrance of Hvalfjörður, less than 25 minutes from our starting point. There were a big pod of white-beaked dolphins, around 6-7 of them. They got our attention immediately, not because it´s an endemic species and their coloration is unique, but because today they had such a good mood that they were jumping out of the water, twisting their bodies in the air and making an awesome acrobatic show for us, it was an incredible moment for everybody. We enjoyed them for more than 20 minutes, so we decided to try our chances further out and see if we were able to spot more species around Faxafloi. After a while sailing, our old friends appeared again, splashes in the distance only meant more dolphins around and indeed we found another pod of 5-6 white-beaked dolphins. It seems to have been the dolphin day today! We spent another enjoyable moment with them and then we came back to Reykjavik but not before we got close to a big flock of birds in between we could see some puffins, skuas and many kittiwakes. So after a hard time the previous days, we finally had an awesome whale-watching trip in Faxafloi.
-Rodrigo A. Martinez Catalan
Tour at 09:00
Report from Eldey: As we were sailing out the conditions were awesome! Unfortunately our sighting success for this trip was rather mediocre. We saw some flocks of sea birds, although even they were fairly calm and did not lead us to any whales. Towards the end of the trip however, we finally spotted some white-beaked dolphins. It was a pod of roughly 6 individuals which were surfacing a couple of times, sometimes getting as close as 50m from the boat. On our way back to the harbour we also spotted some white-beaked dolphins from a distance,leaping out of the water, although we did not have enough time to turn around and get closer.
- Friedrich Rittner
Birds seen on today's tours: Arctic Tern, Arctic Skua, Great Skua, Common Guillemot, Atlantic Puffin, Northern Fulmar, Northern Gannet, Lesser Black-backed Gull, Herring Gull, Great Black-backed Gull, Manx Shearwater, Black-headed Gull, Oystercatcher, Black-legged Kittiwake and Eider Duck,
Status: RUNNING
We are sailing from the Old Harbour in Reykjavik today.The condition look good today and we hope you are able to join us on the search of these magnificent animals in their natural environment.
- Image
- Image
- Image
- Image
- Image
