Saturday, 1 July 2023

Today we will be operating on Þruma RIB for our 10:00,12:00, 14:00, 16:00 and 20:00 Premium Whale tours and on our lovely vessel Eldey and Elding for the 09:00, 10:00, 13:00 and 20:30 Classic Whale Watching tours. Make sure to dress appropriately for the tours as it is always colder on sea than on land.

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 09:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 10:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 10:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 12:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 14:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 16:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 17:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 20:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 20:30

Report from Eldey: Today an unexpected sun was shining above the bay with a calm sea and a light North easterly wind. The cruise was lovely accompanied by many birds, such as puffins, arctic terns and Northern fulmars during all the tour. We couldn't have started better when we just spotted 1 humpback whale after few minutes outside the harbor. We spent a nice quality time with this individual and it showed us a beautiful fluke dive in front of the boat, very close. Suddenly we were surrounded by another humpback and 4 minke whales, popping up from nowhere all around. After a while we decided to look for something else and we met another humpback whale, but quite elusive and we counted other minke whales around, in total 3. It has been a nice tour today, with perfect weather conditions and the sun stayed with us all the time, despite the chilly temperature! 

- Marta Filippini

Report from Hafsulan: We sailed out the bay through long period waves and warmer weather than usual, even though the cloud coverage would slowly catch up with us through the day. A first minke whale passed by us; it followed its path and we continued ours, as it was a little elusive. After a lot of flocks of birds which are always a good sign, we encountered a strange humpback whale, who's behaviour eluded us. It looked like it was resting but slowly was very hard to interpret. It seemed to become a little more active but as we were with it for a while decided to leave it in peace. We finished our journey by finding 2 more minke whales both coming up very frequently and close to the boat! 

- Alex Paumier

Report from Eldey: We sailed out with a grey sky and some heavy rain from Reykjavik but the sea was still calm and there were no waves. On our way we spotted 1 minke whale after quite long time. It was a bit fast but we managed to see it better few times. As its behavior was very elusive we continued our search further out. We saw again other 3 individuals of minke whales all around us swimming and traveling in that area. We also had different encounters with many seabirds, and we saw few small bird flocks during our sailing too. We ran out of time and we had to go back but we kept our eyes open in search of any cetaceans and we saw another sneaky minke whale. 

-Lasse Roggenkamp

Report from Eldey: We sailed out in a very calm sea and had good spotting conditions. Soon after we left the harbor we saw a very active flock of mostly black-backed gulls that was most likely feeding. We stayed for a while in hope that there are any cetaceans nearby and we were not disappointed. We saw a feeding minke whale very close to the flock. Near the flock there were also round about 8 harbor porpoises. In search for other cetaceans we went further out and spotted a big blow. It belonged to a humpback whale. We managed to get very close and got a really good look at that individual that we had seen on previous tours. When we sailed back the sky even cleared up and the sun came out. We saw a total of 6 minke whales, two humpback whales, many harbor porpoises and one very elusive pod of white beaked dolphins. 

-Lasse Roggenkamp

Report from Eldey: Such an amazing sea condition tonight in Faxaflói. Very flat and calm with almost no wind. We crossed a lot of puffins on our way out and they are not the only animals that we found. In total we saw probably 7-8 minke whales, feeding close to flock of active birds. We were stopping to watch them surfacing and we often had 2 or 3 visible at the same time around the boat. There was also 4-5 pods of 2-4 harbour porpoises quickly surfacing, some were even jumping a bit out of the water like dolphins. This type of behaviour allows those small cetaceans to optimise their speed. We also saw a large pod of 10-15 white-beaked dolphins coming very close of the boat, doing some jumps and being curious. They seem curious swimming close by for a while and then returned to their dolphin activities, probably catching some fish and socialising between themselves. A great sighting. We left to explore a bit other areas, saw 2 more minke whale surfacing next to each other, synchronized which is rare to see for those baleen whales. It was time to go back and we smoothly sailed back to the harbour under the midnight sun of Iceland.

- Rob Hyman 

Atlantic puffin, Arctic tern, Arctic skua, herring gull, Northern fulmar, black guillemot, lesser black backed seagull, Northern gannet, great black backed gull, black legged kittiwake.