Tour at 17:00
Report from Eldey: The wind was picking up more and more, and by the end of the tour it was not only a little bit rougher than what we have experienced during the past two days, but also more chilly. We headed straight to the place in which we left the humpback whales in the previous tour, following the trail to almost the end west side of the Reykjanes peninsula. But we weren't meant to be lucky with the humpbacks this time. Nor the cetaceans in general for that matter. Because it took us around 2 hours to find some wildlife out in the bay. And then suddenly a couple of minke whales surfaced briefly for a few times along with some scattered but very active harbour porpoises. Although nice, we thought it didn't reach the level that we want to offer our passengers so we offered complimentary tickets that they will be able to use to come back with us within the next two years!
- Alberto Alejandro
Tour at 14:00
Report from Hafsulan: The beautiful weather from the morning had left us a little as we left the harbour, with the wind conditions being a bit stronger. Fortunately, not too far after the lighthouse, we spotted 2 humpback whales surrounded by harbour porpoises. One passenger even managed to ge a good enough picture of the harbour porpoises to win a free hot chocolate! The humpbacks were very well-behaved and surfaced quite close to the boat before diving and giving us a perfect shot of their flukes. After spending a nice long while with the humpbacks we tried to find something else buyt couldn´t so we returned and were in luck to spend even more time with the humpbacks on our return. What a great tour!
-Rachel Pool
Tour at 13:00
Report from Eldey: While it was mostly cloudy, we had some sun and good sea conditions through out the trip with low swell height. As we were approaching our main sighting area, we spotted two blows in the direction of Akranes close to a flock of feeding sea birds. We made our way towards this area where we spotted two humpback whales, however these whales were still fairly far away and moving away from us. As we were sailing towards these whales, we spotted a minke whale much closer to us, so we decided to stay in the area for a bit. After a few surfaces of the minke whale, we spotted a second one on the other side of the boat, making it difficult for the guide and passengers to focus on where to look. We stayed in the area for 10-20 minutes and everyone got to see the minkes, especially after one popped up only about 30m from the boat. Moving further through the bay, we spotted around 3 harbour porpoises not as shy as usual, popping up a couple of times close to the boat, making it easy for all passengers to see. On our way towards the area where we thought the humpbacks may have gone, we spotted the blows again and luckily got back on the paths of the humpback whales. For the rest of the trip we slowly followed the humpbacks in the direction of Reykjavik and often got to see their flukes in the distance as they were descending into a deeper dive. As the two humpbacks went on a dive, we actually spotted another two blows in the distance on our left, which we identified to be another pair of humpbacks. This was truly amazing, however we never got closer than 100m to these animals. We were able to be around these animals for the rest of the tour and soon had to make our way back to shore. Overall, this tour was a success and with two separate pairs of humpbacks not something we see every day!
- Friedrich Rittner
Tour at 10:00
Report from Hafsulan: Woohoo! If we can ask for a perfect whale watching tour, indeed it was this morning. We had awesome weather and perfect sea conditions to start our adventure. It didn´t take too long till we found a cetacean and, like in the previous tour, we spotted Mister X! We could clearly see a long and pointy dorsal fin that might belong to an Orca male, but this species it´s quite rare in Faxafloi so we prefer to be cautious about it. Anyway the feeling was of total satisfaction, and it was just the beginning. While we were wondering about the identity of mister X, we saw a Minke whale and almost immediately another minke whale and another and another, it was a frantic Minke moment! They were popping up everywhere and we were quite amazed and surprised about it as long as Minkes tend to be solitary animals. But of course it wasn't´t everything, in the middle of our encounter with so many Minkes, we spotted a pod of white-beaked dolphins. They were traveling quite slowly and we were able to see few calves among them. We enjoyed their presence for a while and we decided to try our luck looking for more species and we were blessed again with the best of the fortunes: few pods of harbour porpoises were surfacing here and there. Seabird activity was also quite high so we couldn't´t ask for more in our trip, it was fantastic!
-Rodrigo A. Martinez Catalan
Tour at 09:00
Report from Eldey: Amazing beginning of the day! After 10 minutes of sailing we encounter the first pod of 4-5 white beaked dolphins. Since there were already quite a few ships around them we decided to move forward just to find the first minke whales of the day! At least there were 3 individuals swimming quite close to each other. From that point and onwards the minke whales were a constant in our tour, popping out everywhere.every now and then. We probably spotted overall more than 10 individuals! We are so glad to have this days such a big amount of this species of baleen whales. Now and then we were also spotting a few tiny harbour porpoises, sneaky and fast as usual. We also spotted another pod of white beaked dolphins in the distance - we could tell because of he huge splashes that they were creating that the animals were, indeed, jumping vigorously out of the water! But the highlight of the tour was Mister X! While we were watching a few minkys around us we suddenly saw quite close to us an enormous dorsal fin arising from the surface and going back down just like a killer whale! A closer look to the picture we got from the whale made us suspicious that it may have been the fluke of a minke whale, but deep inside in our hearts we didn't feel like that during the encounter! Orcas can be found in the Faxa Bay fairly rarely, so if it was a real encounter we can seriously consider ourselves lucky!
- Alberto Alejandro
Bird species seen on today´s trips include: atlantic puffins, razorbill, arctic skuas, artic terns, common guillemots, black guillemots, lesser black-backed gulls, great black-back gull, common gull and black-legged kittiwakes.
Tour status: RUNNING
We are sailing out from the old harbour in Reykjavík in this beautiful weather today. The sea is calm so the conditions are perfect today. On this morning's tours we already saw Minke Whales and dolphins, so come and join us on one of our tours today! :) For more information you can contact us diectly at elding@elding.is or by phone +354 519 5000.
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