Saturday, 5 March 2016

Status: RUNNING

We will be sailing out from Sandgerði today, taking our passengers by bus from the old harbour to Sandgerði. A lot of capelin are around the area and with them come humpback whales. On the whale watching tour yesterday we saw humpback whales along with an amazing wildlife. Hopefully today will be just as great.  Please add an extra 1 1/2 to 2 hours to your whale watching tour to account for bus transfers. The forecast predicts a little wind from the south and some swells. 

Tour at 13:00

Report from Eldey: It was an overcast tour with light rain it did not effect the incredible tour we had. We sailed south out from Sandgerði and soon came across a humpback whale, it was traveling and showing it's amazing fluke as it went down for a deep dive. A great humback whale but after a while and a little more sailing we came across two humpback whales, these were also traveling and surfacing and diving together side by side. If that was not awesome enough late and a bit more travelling we came across two fin whales. It has been a long long time since we saw fin whales that I forgot what they looked like. Of course, with their big powerful blow and sleek slender backs it had to be. It was amazing to see them surfacing around big flocks of diving gannets. This tour could not have been better and the passengers left the boat in the pouring rain with a huge smile on their face. 

- Megan Whittaker

Tour at 09:00

Report from Eldey: We sailed again out from Sandgerði today. The weather was good, full overcast but it didn't rain and almost no wind.  The first blow was seen after only 15 minutes. This was a small humpback that seemed rather elusive. We didn't spend much time with it because we hoped to find more further out that might show themselves better. Our next encounter was incredible, three humpbacks traveling together. two large that always kept close to each other and one smaller following. It was easy to follow them as they kept traveling in the same direction. While watching them we spotted our fifth humpback not far away. We got really good look at these incredible animals before heading back. on the way back to Sandgerði we saw our sixth and last individual. More blows were seen further away from from the boat so it is clear that we have a good number of humpbacks still around. 

-Sigurlaug Sigurðardóttir

Birds seen on today's tour included; shags, eider ducks, glaucous gulls, iceland gulls, northern gannets, northern fulmars, kittiwakes, great black-backed gulls.