Saturday, 25 June 2022

Today we will be operating on Premium Whale tours and on our lovely vessel Eldey for the 10:00, 13:00, 14:00 and 17:00 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 | 09:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 10:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 10:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 12:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 14:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 14:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 17:00
• PREMIUM WHALE TOUR | 20:00
• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 20:30

COVID-19: Keep in mind that passengers and crew are asked to ensure their own hygiene and safety at all times. Washing hands thoroughly with soap and using a hand sanitiser is advised.

Report from Elding: Within 10 minutes of leaving port we managed to spot 3 blows glistening under the sun... the other boats in the area did help a little. The other vessels thankfully left as we approached, and we spotted a humpback whale arching its back to go for a deep dive in the distance. Soon after we managed to discover a pair of usually solitary humpbacks diving and surfacing together and followed them, before a single whale resurfaced a little further in the distance. We had at least 4 animals in the same spot and all were taking long dives to catch prey. After following one partifular individual it decided to change its behaviour and began to travel just under the surface of the water away from us, before I managed to spot a large splash behind us from a whale tail slapping. So we turned the boat around and rediscovered our pair of humpbacks from earlier who decided to et us get very close to them, and spent some time resting at the surface between dives, giving us a good oppertunity to photograph them. After spending 40 minutes with these two whales we decided to leave them alone and see if we could find another whale as we slowly began to head back to port, but with no luck on our side we eventually stopped at Engey island off Reykjavik harbour to watch some cute little puffins for a 5 minutes after our 4 humpback whales.

-Liam van Walsum

Report from Eldey: We started our classic tour with a little rough sea and some white caps but with very motivated passengers who kept looking at the sea to spot the animals. After arriving in the hotspot area, there was quite a lot of birds flying around and we saw just 2 times 1 minke whale but we did not stay too long as this animal was avoiding our boat and diving for a long period of time. After few minutes we spotted 2 blows close to another whale watching boat. There were actually 3 humpback whales together and 1 humpback whale alone doing some few dives, probably feeding. We stayed with them for 25 minutes and then we started to head back to Reykjavik and crossed on our way another 1 minke whale. 

- Enorha Guimard

Report from Elding: windy day out at sea, this afternoon. The sea was very choppy, but still, very fun, just like a rollercoaster, as it was real sunny and nice otherwise. It took us a while to get to the point where three humpback whales were sighted, but it was worth it as we were able to observe them from up close in a situation we don't see them often in Iceland: hanging out together. Soon, one of them departed from the others, and popped out real close to our ship, passing underneath. We were able to observe the back of this majestic animal from up close

-Francesco Golin

Report from Eldey: We set out with beautiful sunshine and a lot of wind. It took us some time to see our first cetaceans: harbour porpoises in front of the boat but we did not stay for these little cute creatures and headed off in the direction of a minke whales blow. We saw this minke and some of its companions around in the waters a couple of times untill we notices a pod of 6-7 white beaked dolphins jumping out of the water and having a great time in the waves. They came up very close to the boat and then we also saw a humpback whales blow among the splashes of the dolphins! This whale was jumping and breaching as well as doing tail slaps and giving us an amazing show! Then we also noticed two more humpbacks at our back and no one knew where to look among all of these jumping and breaching cetaceans. Very happily we made our way back in perfect sunshine and actually also saw our 4th humpback whale saying goodbye to us. What an amazing day!

- Cindy Schwenk

Common guillemot, black guillemot, Atlantic puffin, arctic tern, herring gull, lesser black-backed gull, greater black-backed gull, black-legged kittiwake, eider duck, northern fulmar, northern gannet, european comorant, glaucous gull