Saturday, 12 September 2009

Tour at 13:00

The weather was a little better, it wasn't raining quite as much, but it was quite foggy out on the bay. In spite of quite low visibility we spotted a really nice group of harbour porpoises which we followed for a while. The were just beneath a group of Gannets that were feeding in the same area. Just as we were watching the porpoises we spotted a Minke whale really close to the boat. There is a device on board called a fish finder which measures the depth of the sea beneath the boat, and the density of fish beneath us too. In this area there was a lot of fish and the Minke whale was feeding and always surfacing quite close to us so we had a really good look at it several times!! We headed on a bit further after spending a long time with this whale and found another group of feeding Gannets, harbour porpoises and another Minke whale, which again was really great to observe. A really fantastic trip :)

 

Tour at 9:00

Report from Hafsúlan: A nice morning out there in the bay with nice sightings: at least six minke whales and jumping dolphins! The first minke whales stayed a bit away from the boat but later one of them surfaced several times close to the boat. While enjoying the minke whales we saw some splashes in the distance and went there. But we didn't come far because a very nice minke whale appeared and we followed it for a while. It swam quite fast but we sailed at the same speed and it surfaced for a long time always just beside the boat- very nice! But then finally we found the dolphins whose splashes we saw earlier when they were jumping. They were really nice, too and very active. They showed a lot of interest in the boat and approached our boat a lot until they left us fast swimming.

Report from Elding: The weather was quite calm today although it rained throughout the tour. There was a bit of swell from the previous night, but it was still quite nice out on the bay. We headed to our usual whale-watching area and sure enough found several Minke whales. Some of the whales were coming quite close to the boat, others we could observe from a distance. We also were able to spot a group of white-beaked dolphins, which was nice! Some of our passengers were able to spot a small group of harbour porpoises right at the beginning of the trip, but they were a little tricky to spot so we didn't spend time following them.