Sunday, 1 May 2011

Tour at 13:00

The conditions on the bay were excellent and it had even stopped raining. We started the tour with a short stop by Akurey to take a look at the puffins. We saw a lot of puffins around on the water so that was really nice. Once further out we started noticing some harbour porpoises, some really nice and they were surfacing all around the boat. A bit further we saw the first minke whale of this tour. It surfaced few times for us so we got a pretty good look at it. There were few harbour porpoises in the area also but after a while we decided to head a bit further out. Soon we spotted another minke whale and again the porpoises were also surfacing in the area and often really close to the boat. On our way back to the harbour we spotted again a minke whale but it only surfaced three times before we lost track of it. All in all this was a successful tour with great harbour porpoises, minke whales and birds around.

 

Tour at 9:00

We sailed out in good conditions this morning; almost flat sea and calm wind but it was a bit wet. Once in the whale watching area we started noticing few birds around and like often we found whales in that area. We first spotted few harbour porpoises, really nice once, but later also minke whales. The minke whales were great, surfacing many times and because there were few of them in the area we got a good view of them. A one point we shut down the engines to fully enjoy the wildlife. It was great as we could so easily hear the birds and the whales surfacing along with the soothing sounds of the ocean. The harbour porpoises came closer to the boat than before and we were really lucky with the minke whales. On our way back to the harbour we decided to take a look at the conditions in Akurey, one of the puffin colonies in the area, and we saw a lot of puffins around which is a great sign for the coming puffin season. This was a perfect end of a great tour

Birds seen on the tours: Puffins, gannets, guillemots, razorbills, fulmars, kittiwakes and black-backed gulls to name a few.