Saturday, 23 September 2023

Saturday, 23 September 2023

Today we will be operating on Þruma RIB for our 10:00 and 14:00 Premium Whale tour and on our lovely vessel Eldey for the 09:00 and 13:00  Classic Whale Watching tours. Make sure to dress appropriately for the tours as it is always colder on sea than on land.  

  • CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 9:00
  • PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 10:00
  • CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00
  • PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 14:00

Join today's tours:

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This is the original whale watching tour from Reykjavík! Join our highly enthusiastic and experienced team in the search for whales, dolphins and birds of Faxaflói bay! Most common wildlife encountered are humpbacks, minkes, dolphins and porpoises.

Duration
3:00 Hours
Season:
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An exhilarating premium tour starting from the Old Harbour in Reykjavík, with daily departures from 1 Apr - 31 Oct. A personal, small group tour with only 12 person per boat, a specially trained wildlife guide and a certified RIB boat captain.

Duration
2:00 Hours
Season:
Season start date
to
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CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 09:00

Report from Eldey: This Saturday morning we sailed out onto a slighty grey bay. The ocean was quite calm and there was little wind. After about 40min of sailing we saw 1 minke whale. This was a fairly elusive one so we continued on. Then! Suddenly lots of life all in one area - roughly 20 white beaked dolphins and 7 more minke whales! There was jumping dolphins and calves and the minke's came extremely close! We stayed here as long as we could with all the wildlife popping up all round the boat. What a way to start the weekend. 

- Francesco Golin 

CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00

Report from Eldey: This afternoon we sailed out and the bay had changed atmosphere a lot. It was grey and moody and we were excited to see what Faxafloi would offer us. We sailed back to the same spot as the morning. There was fog all around us and then 1 minke whale appeared. This one stayed a little more on the elusive side and did not come up very regularly. Then another one! This one was much friendlier and came up a few times always quite close and even did a few 'lazy' lunge feeds which were exciting to see. I say lazy but they were very quick and fun to see but it wasn't fully at the surface like they usually are. In this same spot we saw 2 small pods of 2 harbour porpoises too. They only came up a few times and it was difficult to tell whether it was 2 different ones or the same one. After a while we had to start our return journey back to the harbour and on the way we saw a pod of 5 white beaked dolphins. They were travelling and just popped up a few times and continued on their journey and so did we.

- Milla Brandao

Birds encountered on today's tours:

Northern fulmar, Northern gannet, eider ducks, manx and sooty shearwater, herring gull, great and lesser black backed gull, black legged kittiwake

Wildlife encountered today:

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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.

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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. 

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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. 

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