Tour at 2030
Report from Elding : We had a beautiful weather during all the tour so everybody enjoyed the sailing. It took us 30 minutes to spot our first Minke Whale, we saw it two times then it disapeared. We headed toward an area where we could see many flocks of bird. We saw a lot of blows so there were definitly a lot of Minkes in the area but we managed to get closer than one for one surfacing and then went for a long deep dive. We had more luck with the group of White-beaked Dolphins we watched for 20 minutes, they came really close to the boat, perfect to take nice photos with the sunset behind ! On the way back a magicien entertained us before we stopped to see our favorite seabirds on Puffin Island !
Tour at 1700
Report from Hafsúlan: What a nice evening tour! We started our tour with the puffin island and as we went further in the bay the first species that we found was a group of white-beaked dolphins. They swam in front of the boat and we saw between 5 to 8 individuals. We could see their bodies under the water and after a while they were even jumping! Their whole body was than over the water surface and passengers enjoyed it a lot. Suddenly we saw a big blow in the distance - therefore we decided to leave the dolphins and we went in the direction of the blow. The second species which we saw was a humback whale. He was travelling and we were able to follow him slowly with our boat. Although we always had to wait a little bit until he surfaced again we enjoyed him a lot. The blow was always very good to see when he surfaced and we had a lot of fun on the boat because he surfaced sometimes just behind the boat while we were looking all in a totally different direction. A very nice tour with a lot of sunshine and impressive animals.
Tour at 14:00
Report from Elding: This afternoon was little bit more difficult than this morning. We were seeing lot of minke whales all around us, but it was very difficult to get close to them. After a long time we found a minke whale that we actually spotted by smelling it before we even saw it! This one swam around us only 15 meters away from us! This was very nice to enjoy this moment with these amazing animals. We stayed there for a long time with the whale until we had to go back to Reykjavík. It just showed us that a patient pays off in the end :)
Tour at 1300
Report from Hafsúlan: it was an excellent but slightly windy tour. We began with the usual look at Puffin Island and then it was off into the bay. One of our researchers spotted the first Minke Whales but this animal dived down and vanished soon. The odd Minke Whale appeared then on for the whole of the trip and sometimes there were more than one around us but we really hit the jackpot towards the end when we went towards a flock of feeding birds and found perhaps 3-5 around us, feeding on the same fish/krill as the birds. Overall the captain and the guide estimate that we saw 10-20 Minke Whales on this tour which makes it a very good one indeed!
Tour at 10:00
Report from Elding: We had such a nice tour this wonderful morning. We started the tour by seeing minke whales, and actually we had quite many in that area! We were seeing lot of minke whales surfacing all around us, but though it was little bit difficult to approach them, but we got to see few of them very close to the boat coming up many times in a row. When we were seeing the minke whales we were interrupted by few harbour porpoises that were fast swimming towards Reykjavík, maybe they were hurrying to vote for a new president in Iceland (today is an election day). To top that all we even saw a small pod of white-beaked dolphins! Three species today in a beautiful weather!
Tour at 0900
Report from Hafsúlan: What a wonderfull start of the day! We had beautiful weather and we saw three different species on our tour! First we saw a group of harbour porpoises next to the boat. As usual they surfaced only several times but we could see very good their body shining in the sun light. We continued our journey and we found a minke whale. He surfaced several times and we could see him very well. We stayed in this area and there were several individuals. We saw at least three minke whales which was really nice. But on our way back to the harbour we had the absolute highlight of our tour! We found a group of white-beaked dolphins. They were absolutely close to the boat, only a few meters and we could see very clear how they swam under the water. They stayed very long time with us and it was great to watch their white-grey bodies. Even a further minke whale surfaced in front of the boat as we stayed with the dolphins. As we continued our way back to the harbour we saw a second group of dolphins and another minke whale. It was a lot of life in the bay today and all passengers enjoyed this trip very much.