Saturday, 27 September 2014

Tour at 13:00

Report from Hafsúlan: the air was more or less still and the sea surface was very flat and bright so it was easy to spot animals from a great distance. We headed to the area were we had seen the minke whales on the morning tour in hope to see them again. When we arrived we saw a flock of northern gannets diving down, we knew this was a good sign that we would also see a cetacean close by because the sea birds are often feeding on the same pray as the whales. Our researcher spotted the first whales of the tour, two minke whales that we saw surfacing very close to each other. We saw at least three other minke whales over the tour, some we got a very good look at and other we only saw for few times. We also spotted another species, a group of 4-5 cute harbour porpoises, it was hard to spot them because of their size and because they were few hundred meters away. but on the way back the sun started to shine on us so it was even easier to enjoy the beautiful landscape around the bay.

- Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir

Tour at 09:00

Report from Hafsúlan: As we left for the morning tour today the air was crisp and chilly and we saw snow-covered mountains for the first time in a while. The first sighting of the day was a single minke whale, but it did not take us very long to discover that there were more individuals than just this one around. As we were watching the first two or three animals (out of at least 4 during this tour) we realized that one of them was a well-known individual called "Peanut" - named after the peanut-shaped tip of its dorsal fin. We watched these whales for quite a while as they moved around a fish-rich area, sometimes coming surprisingly close to us and moving further away at other times. After a while we decided to move on and managed to find another minke whale or two. The behavior was very unpredictable though and not easy to follow. So eventually we decided to head back towards the city. And we were rewarded by at least two pods of white-beaked dolphins, around 7-10 animals in total. At times some of them moved very close to the boat, giving us beautiful looks at them and a great end to this tour!

- Linda

Birds seen on today's tour include: northern gannet, northern fulmar, black-backed gull, glaucous gull, kittiwake, black-headed gull, eider duck, sommon guillemot, arctic skua.