Saturday, 16 May 2015

Tour at 17:00

Report from Hafsúlan: After two very good tour earlier this day we were leaving the harbour for the last time in search of cetaceans. Just before we reached the area where we had the morning encounters, we spotted our first minke whale. We kept following it until we were basically surrounded by whales, always having a look out for the closest one. During this time we also saw a harbour porpoise, it seemed very elusive and was gone as fast as it appeared. Whilst enjoying the approximately 4-5 different minke whales feeding around the boats we identified two of them as Chapel and Simil Hope. After we said our goodbyes we turned around traveling home to Reykjavik. We had a very beautiful view of the sun and cloud formation in the area of Akranes and Akrafjall, perfect to make a few last pictures.

- Michaela Buchbauer

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan and Elding: On this afternoon we went out from the Reykjavik harbour with two boats, because of the high number of passengers. We traveled straight to the area called Márfló where we had several encounters with cetaceans on the morning tour. It took us a longer time to find the animals again, compared to the morning tour. After some time we spotted 2-4 different individuals of minke whales. They seemed rather elusive so we continued on and encountered 2 pods of white- beaked dolphins, in total 5-9 animals as well as one pod of harbour porpoises with 3 individuals. Unfortunately we were running out of time and had to go back to the harbour, enjoying the nice view of Icelands´s landscape.

- Michaela Buchbauer and Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: This morning we started our tour heading out west. Not long until we spotted a pod of white beaked dolphins after leaving the harbour, with 3-5 individuals. As we kept going we encountered at least 4 different minke whales that were feeding as well as traveling. They didn´t seem to be disturbed by the whale watching boats in their feeding area, which made it possible to see them close up when they were surfacing just infront of the boats. Additionally we sighted another group of white-beaked dolphins with 5 individuals. Since we were already out of time, we had to had back, on this we we encountered at least 6 harbour porpoises, which seemed to be two pods that came to together to feed in the same area. Overall a very good and unforgettable tour.

- Michaela Buchbauer 

Bird species seen on today's tours: northern gannets, northern fulmars, razorbills, common guillemots, shags, arctic skuas, arctic terns, puffins, black-backed gulls, kittiwakes.