Saturday, 15 October 2016

Status: RUNNING

We are sailing out from the Old Harbour in Reykjavik today. There is some wind from the South East so there will be movement on the boat.

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: Crowded seas at today's afternoon tour! We went out with the exactly same amazing conditions as this morning: an absolute flat sea, almost crystal clear. There were a few clouds that, indeed, made the contrast much better so the spotting of the cetaceans was extremely easy. Our first encounter was with a pod of 7-9 white beaked dolphins, with at least 3 calves. However, the mothers look to be a little protective and the animals seemed to be avoiding us, so we move out just to encounter two other pods, of about 4-6 individuals each one. A few minutes after we proceeded our sailing and we got to see 4 minke whales! They looked to be traveling, but we got to see a few surfacings quite close to the boat. Near the third one we also found a playful pod of harbour porpoises that were swimming quite close to the minky. A pleasure to see this animals in such a good sea conditions. To end the trip we encountered again a pod of 5-7 dolphins, and this time they decided to approach us and check on us, so we also got to see their bodies just swimming underneath our boat! A perfect day for whale watching into the Faxa bay.

- Alberto Alejandro

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: Today we sailed out on what was probably the nicest day in October so far, almost no wind and a flat sea with just a bit of swell. After about 40-45 min we came across our first group of white-beaked dolphins! It was a group of 6 individuals close to us with more dolphins spread out in the distance. They seemed very relaxed, may have been resting and surfaced very calmly close to us. We spent some time with them before moving on while we could see also more dolphin groups traveling in the distance. After about 15 min of sailing, we saw a small flock of birds in front of us with another group of these dolphins feeding underneath. At some point they stopped feeding and became curious about us and surfaced all around us so that we can follow them with our us underneath the water surface. They also started leaping out of the water so we could see their entire bodies, and they seemed to just be everywhere. It was also 5-6 individuals in this group but they were all over the place and again more in the distance. We were able to identify one of these dolphins as "Beethoven", a dolphins we have seen many times over the last few years! It is very difficult to estimate the total number of dolphins we encountered, it must have been 40+ in the greater area. We enjoyed these white-beaked dolphins and just when we wanted to move on to look for something else, a minke whale surfaced ahead of us about 300 m away - perfect timing! It went for a dive but then we managed to see it several times within 100 m of us before we were running out of time! A beautiful day to be at sea! 

- Hanna Michel

Bird species seen on todays tours include: northern gannet, lesser black-backed gull, Iceland gull, glaucous gull, kittiwake, common guillemot, and eider ducks.