Tour at 20:30 Report from Elding This was an unbelievable tour, we saw all the best of our four most frequently seen species! The water was calm as a mirror and animals could be spotted from great distance. Similar to the earlier tours, minke whales were seen throughout the whole trip, at least 10 individuals in total that we stopped for. Many of them were seen feeding at the surface, surrounded by diving sea birds. Three pods of white beaked dolphins of at least 13 individuals were spotted throughout the tour, many of them came close to the boat and jumped out of the water so we could see their whole bodies. Even the harbour porpoises were fantastic, they came towards us while our engines were up, at this time we were waiting for a humpback to surface next to us and the porpoises grabbed our attention, so cute right next to us. The high peak of the tour was definitely the humpback whale! It seemed to be so curios, surfacing and spy hopping right next to the boat. It swam underneath the boat a few times, making slow circles around us. This was a moment the crew wont forget! We expanded the tour because of this encounter and stayed with the humpback until it slowly swam away, surfacing between the huge flocks of feeding sea birds.
- Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir
Tour at 17:00
Report from Eldey: The sun was beaming down on us as we left the port this evening, with very few of us actually requiring the overalls. Almost as soon as we turned the corner out of the harbour, we saw some harbour porpoises in line with Akranes. Taking a second look, we realised that behind the harbour porpoises were white-beaked dolphins - and even more amazingly, with the dolphins was a humpback whale! It was the same calf from the morning and the dolphins were surrounding it like an entourage, like the calf had its own personal security detail. Not too long after we got there the whale and dolphins skidaddled, but it was still incredible to see the way the two species were interacting with each other! Less than a kilometre away we encountered yet another humpback whale, probably the juvenile once more from the morning. As it seemed to be showing consistently slow dives and surfaces, we deduced it was resting and decided to leave it alone. Inching further out into the bay, we were soon accosted by minke whales and harbour porpoises everywhere. It got to the stage I had to stop pointing them out on the microphone because everyone on the boat would be pointing in a different direction. We even got to see one lunge-feeding right next to the boat, and just as I thought it couldn´t get any better, we were once more joined by a humpback! With all of these animals feeding around us I was stunned into silence - what an absolutely stupendous day!
-Rachel Pool
Tour at 14:00
Report from Hafsúlan: This afternoon was just as nice as our morning tour! The sea conditions still incredibly good and being out at sea was simply enjoyable. We started with a group of around 10 harbour porpoises that we passed by on our way out into the bay. We didn't´t turn towards them, but since they were heading into the same direction as us, we were able to watch them on our side for a few minutes. First, we heard of a few white-beaked dolphins that were seen in the area and went to that direction and ended up with 2 of these curious dolphins around us. Even though it was not as many of them as we usually see, it was pretty cool! They seemed very relaxed and just swam next two us and sometimes came straight towards us and looked at our passengers and swam underneath the boat to the other side to have a look. The dolphins are the best! We left them after some time to have a look at a minke whale! It is not easy to say how many of these small whales we actually saw during the tour, It must have been ca. 20, maybe more, that we were able to see in the bay. Some of them got very close when they were feeding. There were small flocks of feeding birds all over the place and they were very helpful at pinpointing us to the minke whales! So we got to see several of them feeding together with hundreds of sea birds! One of them was my favorite minke whale called Tap which we have seen almost every year here in Iceland since 2010! In between all the minkes, we briefly so three more white-beaked dolphins which didn't´t really see very fond of our presence, and also another 10 or so harbour porpoises making some small splashes as they were racing through the water. And finally, when we were already thinking about going back to the harbour, we found ourselves a humpback whale! It was just slowly traveling when we saw it first, then went for a deep dive with a fluke-up and then it stayed underwater for ca. 10 min before coming up again. We had to be a bit patience and we were a bit late back in the harbour, but we managed to allow everyone to get another look at the humpie before our return!
- Hanna Michel
Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey: The weather was still perfect for whale watching, so calm, warm and beautiful. The first encounter was a minke whale rather close to the harbour, only 25 minutes after we sailed out. We didnt stay there for long as we knew there was so much life on the bay. Similar to the other trips today we were overwlmed by the number of minke whales seen all around us. Sometimes we got such great looks at them as they surfaced close to us although most were seen far away. A few times we even spotted them feeding at the surface, forming splashes when they surfaced with their mouth open! Two humpback whales were also seen on the tour, the first was not very active and dove for long times before it resurfaced. Our second humpback gave us a better show and should have been easy for everyone to catch a photo of. We wish that every day would be like this one on Faxaflói-bay.
- Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir
Tour at 10:00
Report from Hafsúlan: One of those days you are really glad you went out of bed! Even without cetaceans it would have been lovely to sail around the bay today without any wind, with sun and with a mirror instead of a sea. For the second day in a row we found the humpback whales fairly close to the harbour. The first one was the same young individual that was lying around that same spot yesterday. We could recognize it because of its beautiful black coloration on the lower side of its fluke. Although swimming quite slowly, almost as if it was resting, it surfaced 10 m away from our boat for the delight of all our passengers! We gave a little bit of space to the animal and kept going but in less than 4 minutes we saw a second individual that gave us a few surfacings and a few flukes-up. We resumed our sailing deep into the bay and we found ourselves in the middle of a feeding ground: tons of birds flying around, and an incredible number of minke whales (I don't feel capable of estimating how many!) popping out now and then. Again, we enjoyed a few encounters really close to the boat, and we were even capable of recognize one of our regular minkys: Tap! After that we kept going, trying to spot maybe a few dolphins but instead we found several pods of 3-4 harbour porpoises, porpoising all around the bay, and 2 more humpback whales! A thrilling and exciting morning sailing in the Faxaflói!
- Alberto Alejandro
Tour at 09:00
Report from Eldey: What a great start to the morning - we left the harbour with glassy seas and zero wind, with just enough cloud cover to give the sea a nice uniform colour. Just in line with the lighthouse Grotta, we encountered our first species - a humpback whale calf! It was one of the most adorable things I´ve ever seen. It came quite close to the boat as well, so we all got a good peek at it before we decided to leave it alone so we wouldn´t stress it out. Not too far away from the humpback, we encountered a pod of 10 white-beaked dolphins. These guys were awesome, swimming right underneath the boat and then breaching as they porpoised away from us. Speaking of porpoising, we also got to see the harbour porpoises during the tour, but as they were being their usual shy selves we didn´t see too much of them. Heading straight for a flock of frenzied birds, we were soon surrounded by more than 4 minke whales. All of this happened in the first half of our tour! After being incredibly satisfied with our encounters, we returned to port only to meet another humpback, this time a juvenile. Surfacing just two times, as it dived it gave us a fantastic look at its fluke, so it´s safe to say we entered the port with beaming faces at the end of this amazing tour!
-Rachel Pool
Bird species seen on today's tours include: northern gannet, northern fulmar, kittiwake, lesser black-backed gull, arctic tern, atlantic puffin, common guillemot, black guillemot, manx shearwater, arctic skua and eider duck.
Status: RUNNING
We are sailing out from the Old Harbour in Reykjavik today. There is little wind today so the sea conditions are good. All our boats have inside and outside areas and to make the tour even more comfortable we provide warm overalls. We are looking forward to seeing you!
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