Saturday, 10 May 2014

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: If the morning was considered a huge success then this afternoon should be considered something special. And it was all down to one huge event right at the end of the tour, but more about that later. We sailed first for the same area we were successful in the morning, there we found one Minke Whale that was slowly travelling through the area. It wasn´t in much of a boat mood though and kept disappearing for long periods of time so we moved on. When we did we found an area like the morning that was filled with birds and another 3 minke whales! These were much more visible and while we were enjoying them suddenly in front of us a pod of White-Beaked Dolphins appeared, the dolphins were amazing! They were interacting with the boat and even had a calf with them! While this would have all made for a very good tour, it wasn´t the special moment. While we were heading back to port out of nowhere arond 150m away a Minke Whale fully breached out of the water! 3 times! This is a truly rare event especially in such calm water! I know that this will be remembered by all.

- Jack Ball

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: This was a seriously minketastic morning! In fantastic weather we sailed forth from Reykjavík, previous days of good minke sightings told us where we needed to go and so we headed straight for that same area. After around an hour of sailing we managed to spot a Minke Whale in the distance, getting closer to that area we realised that there was more than one minke in the area. In fact it turned out there were a lot of minkes in the area, in total in the tour we would find around 7 minke whales. We got a great look at four that were very close to the boat and were travelling and feeding in the area we were sailing in, they were even coming within 10 metres of the boat on numerous occassions. And the area we were was a huge feeding ground for the birds too, there diving Gannets and groups of Puffins aong many other birds. A real feast for the eyes today!

- Jack Ball

Birds seen on todays tour include: Atlantic Puffin, Northern Gannet, Northern Fulmar, Black-Backed Gull, Kittiwake, Eider Duck, Arctic Skua, Great Skua, Arctic Tern, Guillemot, Razorbill.

Breaching Minke Whale picture taken by passenger Annkathrin Weiß