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Saturday, 2 November 2024
- CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 9:00, 13:00
All tours are on schedule today from Reykjavík! Remember to dress according to weather and feel free to borrow our thermal overalls if needed!
CLASSIC WHALE WATCHING | 0900
Report from Eldey: We set off excited to hopefully find Flak the humpback close to land once again. But we looked around the areas she had been recently but no sign. So we headed out further to the bay and came across lots of other wildlife instead. At one point we were surrounded by what felt like 100s of black legged kittiwakes and sooty shearwaters. Before we found a lone white beaked dolphin that was bowriding with us for quite a long time. Then we saw a blow so headed to it. It was from a minke whale! It was a really nice one to watch as it always surfaced really near us. This meant everyone got a great look at it and saw the beautiful patterns along the side of the whale. We then carried on and saw another solo dolphin. Then we headed home in the cold after a lovely morning.
- Rob Hyman
CLASSIC WHALE WATCHING | 13:00
Report from Eldey: Sailing out again this afternoon, we hoped to get more to see that this morning. After sailing very far out, we were starting to lose faith. Luckily, we finally came across our main zone of interest, surrounded by large flocks of Icelandic and glaucous gulls: 6 minke whales raomed around us, with 4 of them coming very colse to the boats. The usually shy species was, this afternoon, all over our tour, with more activity than we ever hoped to see. As we headed back, we were also lucky to come across small pods of 8 harbor porpoises around the islands surrounding Reykjavik, to finish the tour on a great note.
- Alex Paumier
Birds encountered today were:
Sooty shearwater, common guillemot, eider duck, black legged kittiwake, cormorant, glaucous gull, Icelandic gull, lesser black-backed gull.
Wildlife encountered today:
The Minke Whale is the most common whale around Iceland and actually the world thus it is one of the main species we encounter on our whale watching tours. It is one of few species that don’t mind coming to shallower waters like here in Faxaflói Bay to feed on the abundant food available to them.
The white-beaked dolphin is the most common dolphin found in the surrounding waters of Iceland and is seen not only in the summer but winter too usually in larger numbers, hundreds sometimes. When feeding they show energetic behaviour such as breaching out of the water and coming down with a big splash and bursts of fast swimming.
The Harbour Porpoise is the smallest and most abundant cetacean around Iceland. They are usually shy but occasionally they come and play around the boats. They can be relatively hard to spot from a distance due to their size and their abundance depends entirely on the food availability of our shores since they are opportunistic feeders.