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Saturday, 21 April 2012

Tour at 13:00

Report from Elding: I don't think I need to repeat the report from Hafúlan, but I will anyways, WHAT A DAY! We started the tour by seeing nice pod of harbour porpoises. They were just everywhere around us and some of them came very close to us! Little later we saw a minke whale! This one surfaced few times for us and surprised us all by coming up very close to the boat! We heard from other vessels that there were more whales little further out, and what a party! Humpback whales, minke whales and harbour porpoises!! This was just amazing. The humpback showed us very interesting feeding behaviour as Hafúlan reported here. Very very nice day in a beautiful weather!

Report from Hafúlan: Wow what a tour. The sea was calmer and the whales were more active and abundant. On the way offshore we saw a couple of Puffins, loads of Harbour Porpoises and once in the area we saw at least 3-5 Minke Whales, some close and some further a way and a couple of Humpback Whales, one which was amazing, lunge feeding (coming high out of the water with ventral plates extended and mouth full of food), rolling and sometimes showing his/her beautiful tail when diving. After a while of watching this whale other boats came and so we headed away too find other whales. We went to watch a couple of Minkes and then another Humpback Whale before we headed home.

 

Tour at 9:00

The weather was beautiful, sea was mirror calm and wildlife numerous. We headed out and saw 10-20 puffins scattered on our way offshore and quite a few Harbour Porpoises too surfacing quickly through the water. Then we saw a Minke Whale surfacing many times 20-30 meters from the boat. We wanted to spend most of our time further offshore where there were many species and individuals from previous days. It had calmed down a little from the last couple of weeks, less birds and less Humpback Whales but we found a pair of Humpbacks travelling together so we got a nice distance from them and turned off our engines. We had them surfacing less than a meter from our boat, circled a couple of times around us and then headed away. Whether this was to interact with us or whether there was fish beneath us or maybe both we will never know. It was incredible to watch nonetheless.

Seabirds seen on todays tour included; Gannets, Guillemots, Razorbills, Puffins, Fulmars, Kittiwakes, Seagulls and Eider Ducks