Saturday, 24 October 2015

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: The wind was picking up an the swell getting a little higher but we were able to get shelter from land and stay in calm sea for the most part of the tour. We went to the same area where we had found the dolphins on the morning tour but could not find anything. We went further north than we did on the morning tour and there we found a little more bird life. Suddenly one of our passengers said he saw couple of fins popping up few hundred meters in front of us. These were 4-5 white beaked dolphins that soon swam under our boat. It seemed like these dolphins might have been feeding, they spent quite long time underwater when they went for deeper dives and were constantly changing directions and surfaced often very fast making splashes that helped us to spot them. Even though it was not so easy to follow these rather elusive dolphins we were able to follow them for 15-20 minutes before they disappeared. 

-Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: A bitterly cold, blustery day on the Bay however, this made for a stunning scenery of all the snow-capped mountains. The winds were estimated at about 12-14m/s coming in from the north....bbbrrrrrrrrrrr. The sea conditions were not that bad, maybe a little rocky as we passed Hvalfjörður (Whale Fjord). It was not long until we found a pod of 7-10 friendly white-beaked dolphins. They surfaced suddenly in the swell just to the right of us and soon started leaping, body slamming and playing uder the boat. They are very beautiful dolphins and so much fun to watch. After a while they started to travel fast and looked to be on a mission to catch some lunch and so they left and we did too. We were hoping to find the humpbach whale from yesterday but unfortunately no other cetaceans were to be found on this tour. We enjoyed the landscape, wildlife and being out on the water and made full use of the bar where hot drinks were bought in adundance. Don't forget to order the 'Whale Punch' (Hot chocolate with Rum) next time your on board... Yuummmmm!

- Megan Whittaker

Birds seen on todays tours include: northern gannets, northern fulmars, common guillemots, eider ducks, whooper swans, greater black-backed gulls, glaucous gulls, Iceland gulls, kittiwakes and black-headed gulls.