Saturday, 7 December 2024

• CLASSIC WHALE TOUR | 13:00

Report from Eldey: Today was a beautiful winter day! Blue skies, calm seas, perfect for whale watching. We headed back to the islands, confident and optimistic that we were going to find some wildlife and we weren't wrong! Over the whole tour we saw 5 humpback whales! When we first approached the far side of Viðey, we found 2 humpbacks swimming side by side. This is already unusual to see! They were inseparable for the whole tour. While we were waiting for the whale to resurface, we spotted another individual further away moving a bit more quickly. We decided to move on to a slightly different area because we saw a fourth blow! This humpback was totally asleep! It didn't care that we were watching them rest and just stayed fast asleep. The whale let themselves drift so that they were within touching distance of the passengers on the bow! When their tail almost touched the boat, it woke up slightly and moved a little bit further away. Then it fell right back to sleep and repeated the amazing interaction again! After this second time, we decided to let them rest peacefully and we moved to another area. There we found our fifth humpback whale. This one was feeding, giving us lovely views of their tail when it went for dives! A perfect way to finish this incredible tour!

- Emily Erskine

Black guillemot, great cormorant, eider duck, common gull, icelandic gull, lesser black-backed gull